Thank you to NetGalley for letting me read this book. I’m so glad I did.
How to describe it? It’s a series of linked essays, alongside a personal story. It looks at different aspects of winter – darkness, cold, hibernation, stocking up – and explores their obvious meaning, but also what these things mean at a deeper level. This means it moves from dormice to community celebrations; from cold water swimming to the Northern lights. Along the way, Katherine May meditates on what it means to winter psychologically – those times when we withdraw from the world, when we lie fallow – why do we need to do that? How do we move on from our personal wintering? And what work are we doing as we winter?
It’s an interesting premise, and it felt true to me. In a world where we are constantly exhorted to “live, laugh, love” it can be difficult to be sad, to pause, but maybe we need to accept sadness and learn from it.
I want to press this book on various people. I hope lots of people read it. I hope people find something important here.
Such a beautiful cover, too.
fantasticmetastaticme 