The faraway nearby

259 pages

English language

Published Oct. 30, 2013

ISBN:
978-0-670-02596-1
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OCLC Number:
818953764

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4 stars (5 reviews)

A companion to "A Field Guide for Getting Lost" explores the ways that people construct lives from stories and connect to each other through empathy, narrative, and imagination, sharing anecdotes about historical figures and members of the author's own family.

1 edition

Review of 'The faraway nearby' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is the second book by Rebecca Solnit that I’ve read and now I’m certain I need to read everything else she’s written and whatever else she publishes in my lifetime. Much like A Field Guide to Getting Lost (and every bit as soulful and beautifully written), The Faraway Nearby is not about one thing, but many things – personal stories, the tales of others, history, art, fairytales and folklore – and it’s both Solnit’s perspective and the way she weaves all these threads together that has me hooked on her writing. This time Solnit explores interconnectedness and stories, the stories that shape and map our own lives, how we are woven into each others stories and, in turn, form even greater, more complex charts of the geography of self, life and death, memory and perception, illness and injury, treatment and healing, discovery, growth and change. It’s both a memoir …

Review of 'The faraway nearby' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I think the idea is that the individual chapters can stand for themselves, but that means that there's a lot of repetition going on if you read them in quick succession. Which I found a bit annoying, i.e. I don't need to be reminded of the different translations of הבל numerous times, and there were a couple of other paragraphs that appeared more or less verbatim on multiple occasions. Most of the chapters are really nice to read though (and who doesn't love to hear about Iceland?).

Oh, and for a book that wants to nerd out about different old languages so much: hippocampus isn't latin.

Subjects

  • Autobiography
  • Narration (Rhetoric)
  • Storytelling
  • Psychological aspects
  • Authorship
  • American essays