The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year
Staff Reviews
This book is a joy to hold and behold. Just what the Universe has ordered up for these trying times, and Margaret Renkl has delivered. 52 transcendent meditations on the natural world. Brief yet beautiful with illustrations to accompany done by her brother.
Over and over Margaret reminds us that even though "The world is burning, and there is no time to put down the water buckets, for just an hour, put down the water buckets anyway."
I promise you, you will not even need an hour, just a few minutes a day to realize that "The world is trembling into possibility" and that "until the very last cricket falls silent, the beauty-besotted will find a reason to love the world."
Oh what a lovely world to live in — every night I looked forward to sinking in. Set up like a devotional following the seasons, Renkl brings hope to our chances to make a difference as climate news only gets worse. Gift yourself this treasure.
Description
THE PERFECT GIFT FOR NATURE LOVERS, BIRDERS, AND GARDENERS, WITH ORIGINAL COLOR ART THROUGHOUT * USA TODAY BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * AMAZON EDITOR'S PICK * INDIE NEXT PICK
From the beloved New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author of Late Migrations comes a "howling love letter to the world" (Ann Patchett): a luminous book that traces the passing of seasons, personal and natural.
In The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a literary devotional: fifty-two chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons--from a crow spied on New Year's Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year, to the lingering bluebirds of December, revisiting the nest box they used in spring--what develops is a portrait of joy and grief: joy in the ongoing pleasures of the natural world, and grief over winters that end too soon and songbirds that grow fewer and fewer.
Along the way, we also glimpse the changing rhythms of a human life. Grown children, unexpectedly home during the pandemic, prepare to depart once more. Birdsong and night-blooming flowers evoke generations past. The city and the country where Renkl raised her family transform a little more with each passing day. And the natural world, now in visible flux, requires every ounce of hope and commitment from the author--and from us. For, as Renkl writes, "radiant things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world."
With fifty-two original color artworks by the author's brother, Billy Renkl, The Comfort of Crows is a lovely and deeply moving book from a cherished observer of the natural world.