Rating:
2.5 Stars
In a nutshell:
Author May explores the changing of the seasons and the different ways we weather the literal and metaphorical winters of our lives, as told sort of in memoir form.
Best for:
I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps those experiencing challenges right now? This book is a bit all over the place.
Quote that made me think:
“The needle breaks the fabric in order to repair it. You can’t have one without the other.”
“Have we really got so far into the realm of electric light and central heating that the thythm of the year is irrelevant to us, and we no longer even want to notice the point at which the nights start getting shorter again?”
Why I chose it:
I picked it up a year ago but didn’t get to it – it looked interesting. Then life took over and other books jumped to the top of the pile. It caught my eye again at the start of Autumn, but took me about three weeks to read.
Review:
I should say up front that I think I get what the author was trying to do, and why she took this approach. It’s just not very successful for me.
The book feels a bit like an autobiography in search of a topic. I don’t think that’s how it started, but its more about the author than the overall concept of winter. In the epilogue (or perhaps the afterward?) she says she started out with the idea of interviewing a lot of people about winter, and traveling to many places that experience different aspects of winter. But she mostly did not do that, though she does call upon a trip she took to see the northern lights in Norway one January a few years ago.
The book is broken up into months – October through to March – and she explores some interesting ideas of literal winter (staying in, tacking stock, preparing for the next year) and metaphorical – illness, career challenges, life challenges. They don’t quite work together, but I do get what she was trying to do. Some chapters seemed bizarre and irrelevant – the one about wolves just seemed like it was filling space. Others stuck with me, and made me think about how I view not just winter, but where I am in any moment. The idea of life as not just linear but also cyclical. And it made me interested in thinking more about how to live in the moments as they are, not pining for spring in the winter, or autumn in the summer. So that’s good at least.
Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Maybe? I don’t think I can say I would recommend it, but I don’t think it should be avoided if one is interested in reading it.
