A thoughtful, entertaining exploration of the joys and grittiness of country life.
A creative nonfiction work that mixes memories, family stories, and fanciful thoughts about the future.
Neves was raised on a farm in Freedom, Maine, as the third of four siblings and the only girl. Her early life was one of adventure and tenacious labor, most of which she seems to have enjoyed. Here, she presents a collection of essays divided into two sections, telling tales of life in Freedom, which encompasses her childhood and adolescence, and accounts of her time on a nonworking farm in Palermo, Maine, where she and her husband live with their four children. Readers soon discover that a simple tale, in Neves’ hands, has many parts, including musings about connections—between people and between people and nature. She also includes anecdotes from family lore, including the opening tale about a rebellious act by her father when he was a child in grade school: “Like many of my father’s stories,” Neves says, “this one has the texture of a well-constructed fable, driven by an undercurrent of vigilante justice, and a message of empowerment.” The author displays a similar sense of justice in these pieces, but she also questions, pulls apart, and analyzes actions and reactions of herself and others. She does so with empathy and occasional self-effacing, acerbic humor; for instance, while pondering her parents’ encouragement of independent thinking in their children, she notes that she’s a “freethinker”: “Not in the sense that freethinkers make decisions and form opinions based on reason and fact, but in the way that my thoughts and ideas were generally free from the constraints of reality.” In these pages, Neves reveals herself as a wordsmith whose long, twisty sentences are consistently enticing; one highlight is her story of a pig named Priscilla who was truly committed to her task of clearing weeds. Because memories can change over time, Neves says, she writes “in the hope that words have more power than things, that they will last at least as long as I do.”
A thoughtful, entertaining exploration of the joys and grittiness of country life.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-943424-62-7
Page Count: 155
Publisher: North Country Press
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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