Appealing religious affirmation born from a naturalist’s search for meaning.
This nature journal/inspirational memoir follows the seasons on a Midwestern homestead.
In her first book, Countryman explores the natural rhythms of her land outside a small town in Ohio through a decidedly Christian perspective. Beginning in spring, Countryman observes animals from her porch or along her drive home, focusing her attention on the interactions among smaller woodland creatures, such as chipmunks and blue jays, as well as observing seemingly menacing animals, such as raccoons and vultures. In these small moments, she distills a parallel experience for Christians, anthropomorphizing the robins chattering in a forsythia bush as husband and wife, struggling to love their neighbors. Her musings on the first flight of a nest of baby crows under the watchful eye of a larger crow segues into a comparison with our struggles as witnessed by a vigilant God, who seems vindictive but in fact “waits upon our failings in the same way as the mother crow” does, ready to encourage his followers when they falter. In another incident, Countryman finds empathy for snakes, despite her initial dislike for them; she uses this instance as a metaphor for prejudice, when people label others without seeking to understand. As the narrative stretches into winter, Countryman equates the magic of the season’s first snowfall to the divine gift celebrated each winter on Christmas. Though each anecdote could stand alone, this contemplative digest has a seasonal progression that unfolds into a larger conversation about how nature can reflect tenets of religion. Countryman draws clear allegories that present recognizable situations on universal themes such as perseverance, generosity, and love. Each episode ends (and is usually dotted) with Scripture, often encapsulating a moral that relates to common struggles of religious believers. Though cutesy at times, Countryman’s impulse to see her relationships and spiritual path in the environment around her falls into the tradition of transcendentalists who dovetailed the study of nature with philosophy and spirituality. Believers, at least, will appreciate her ideas about the nature of human beings and the world at large.
Appealing religious affirmation born from a naturalist’s search for meaning.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-1490855516
Page Count: 138
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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