A mesmeric voice, hypnotic from the first page to the last. Would like to read straight away again, cover to cover. Civil engineer, sun-charred calcium. An eye to the world that would see it made better. More planning, fewer politicians, more care.

A mesmeric voice, hypnotic from the first page to the last. Would like to read straight away again, cover to cover. Civil engineer, sun-charred calcium. An eye to the world that would see it made better. More planning, fewer politicians, more care.
Uncomfortable shoes for everyone benefiting from the Empire’s stolen property. Brilliant set-up that shifts stagnant pooling perspectives with a splash. Settling at its most unsettling. Australia’s bitter colonial story told with devastating freshness. (Yet alas, poor toads, again the butt of metaphor.)
The work of co-living coded in this writing’s ethic. Reminder. One’s child is ‘just another human animal, no more or less worthy than any others’. And a finding. Babies might forget excellent cuddles but are traumatised when not cuddled ‘well enough’ (Winnicot).
Dreamy Jimmy keeps pace with a rescued greyhound, becomes the ‘lithe body of a river’, enters the ‘golden lights’ of a grotto, raps out his life with Run DMC (285). The wisdom of Gabe. People can change if ‘life lets them’ (267).
Humans getting over themselves, entering the flow that was always-already there. Wandering and wondering with all the other nomads. Forget human norms, all that ‘normality, normalcy, and normativity’ (26). Death embraced for its ‘radical immanence’ (136). Time now for ‘transformative becoming’ (165).
A reader buddy called it an epic as a slur. To my reading, this book is epic in the modern sense, despite its spirit of respect for the elders. Heads roll, guns fire, love conquers, vengeance is had and life goes on.
At many points in Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë questions the inequity between humans and other animals, both by linking physical cruelty to other forms of oppression, and by depicting such oppressions as unacceptable, be they enacted against humans or nonhumans. In …
This essay is part of an ongoing effort to strengthen my material affinity with snakes. By working through my all-too-human physical engagement with these creatures, turning to literature to re-imagine the ways that I see the snakes in my life, I aim…