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Top of the pile
82
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
74/100Critics
91/100Scholars
Author:
Dara McAnulty
Publisher:
Milkweed Editions
Date:
June 8, 2021
From sixteen-year-old Dara McAnulty, a globally renowned figure in the youth climate activist movement, comes a memoir about loving the natural world and fighting to save it.
What The Reviewers Say
[McAnulty's] prose is both spirited and spiritual, performing an intensive phenomenological survey of the wildlife around his home, bringing the reader into deep, occasionally uncomfortably close communion with the insects, plants and, above all, the birds of Northern Ireland.
... a remarkable book, the most moving memoir I have read in years. Now 17, Dara wrote it when he was 14, and his knowledge at such a young age amazed me — not just his understanding of the natural world, which is immense, but of literature, of Irish history and legends, of music and politics. His writing is clear and honest, laced with analogies from nature.
Is it ageist to expect a callow book from a young author? Any such expectations will be confounded by this wise, lyrical, and well-researched book.
McAnulty is a perceptive, introspective narrator whose descriptions of seasonal changes in the natural landscape are crystalline. His autism turbocharges his angst, and his intense reflections about the differences he feels in and out of his natural world refuge are self-aware.
