ISBN:
1571313788
Title: Late Migrations Pdf A Natural History of Love and Loss
Author: Margaret Renkl
Published Date: 2019
Page: 248
Praise for Margaret Renkl’s Late Migrations “Beautifully written, masterfully structured, and brimming with insight into the natural world, Late Migrations can claim its place alongside Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and A Death in the Family. It has the makings of an American classic.”―Ann Patchett, author of Commonwealth "[Margaret Renkl] is the most beautiful writer! I love this book. It's about the South, and growing up there, and about her love of nature and animals and her wonderful family." ―Reese Witherspoon "A perfect book to read in the summer . . . This is the kind of writing that makes me want to just stay put, reread and savor everything about that moment." ―Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air “A compact glory, crosscutting between consummate family memoir and keenly observed backyard natural history. Renkl’s deft juxtapositions close up the gap between humans and nonhumans and revive our lost kinship with other living things.”―Richard Powers, author of The Overstory "Magnificent . . . Conjure your favorite place in the natural world: beach, mountain, lake, forest, porch, windowsill rooftop? Precisely there is the best place in which to savor this book." ―NPR.org "Late Migrations has echoes of Annie Dillard's The Writing Life―with grandparents, sons, dogs and birds sharing the spotlight, it's a witty, warm and unaccountably soothing all-American story." ―People "[Renkl] guides us through a South lush with bluebirds, pecan orchards, and glasses of whiskey shared at dusk in this collection of prose in poetry-size bits; as it celebrates bounty, it also mourns the profound losses we face every day." ―O, the Oprah Magazine "Graceful . . . like a belated answer to [E.B.] White." ―Wall Street Journal "A lovely collection of essays about life, nature, and family. It will make you laugh, cry―and breathe more deeply." ―Parade Magazine “This warm, rich memoir might be the sleeper of the summer. [Renkl] grew up in the South, nursed her aging parents, and never once lost her love for life, light, and the natural world. Beautiful is the word, beautiful all the way through.”―Philadelphia Inquirer "Like the spirituality of Krista Tippett's On Being meets the brevity of Joe Brainard . . . The miniature essays in Late Migrations approach with modesty, deliver bittersweet epiphanies, and feel like small doses of religion."―Literary Hub "In her poignant debut, a memoir, Renkl weaves together observations from her current home in Nashville and short vignettes of nature and growing up in the South.―Garden & Gun “Renkl feels the lives and struggles of each creature that enters her yard as keenly as she feels the paths followed by her mother, grandmother, her people. Learning to accept the sometimes harsh, always lush natural world may crack open a window to acceptance of our own losses. In Late Migrations, we welcome new life, mourn its passing, and honor it along the way.”―Indie Next List (July 2019), selected by Kat Baird, The Book Bin "[A] stunning collection of essays merging the natural landscapes of Alabama and Tennessee with generations of family history, grief and renewal. Renkl's voice sounds very close to the reader's ear: intimate, confiding, candid and alert." ―Shelf Awareness "A book that will be treasured."―Minneapolis Star Tribune "One of the best books I've read in a long time . . . [and] one of the most beautiful essay collections that I have ever read. It will give you chills."―Silas House, author of Southernmost “A close and vigilant witness to loss and gain, Renkl wrenches meaning from the intimate moments that define us. Her work is a chronicle of being. And a challenge to cynicism. Late Migrations is flat-out brilliant and it has arrived right on time.”―John T. Edge, author of The Potlikker Papers “Gracefully written and closely observed, Renkl’s lovely essays are tinged with the longing for family and places now gone while rejoicing in the flutter of birds and life still alive.”―Alan Lightman, author of Einstein’s Dreams “Here is an extraordinary mind combined with a poet’s soul to register our own old world in a way we have not quite seen before. Late Migrations is the psychological and spiritual portrait of an entire family and place presented in quick takes―snapshots―a soul’s true memoir. The dire dreams and fears of childhood, the mother’s mysterious tears, the imperfect beloved family . . . all are part of a charged and vibrant natural world also filled with rivalry, conflict, the occasional resolution, loss, and delight. Late Migrations is a continual revelation.”―Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls “Renkl holds my attention with essays about plants and caterpillars in a way no other nature writer can.”―Mary Laura Philpott, author of I Miss You When I Blink “This is the story of grief accelerated by beauty and beauty made richer by grief. . . . Like Patti Smith in Woolgathering, Renkl aligns natural history with personal history so completely that the one becomes the other. Like Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Renkl makes, of a ring of suburbia, an alchemical exotica.”―The Rumpus “[A] magnificent debut . . . Renkl instructs that even amid life’s most devastating moments, there are reasons for hope and celebration. Readers will savor each page and the many gems of wisdom they contain.”―Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Compelling, rich, satisfying . . . The short, potent essays of Late Migrations are objects as worthy of marvel and study as the birds and other creatures they observe.”―Foreword Reviews (starred review) “A melding of flora, fauna and family . . . Renkl captures the spirit and contemporary culture of the American South better than anyone.”―Book Page, A 2019 Most Anticipated Nonfiction Book “[Late Migrations] is shot through with deep wonder and a profound sense of loss. It is a fine feat, this book. Renkl intimately knows that ‘this life thrives on death’ and chooses to sing the glory of being alive all the same.”―Booklist “A series of redolent snapshots and memories that seem to halt time. . . . [Renkl’s] narrative metaphor becomes the miraculous order of nature . . . in all its glory and cruelty; she vividly captures ‘the splendor of decay.’”―Kirkus “A captivating, beautifully written story of growing up, love, loss, living, and a close extended family by a talented nature writer and memoirist that will appeal to those who enjoy introspective memoirs and the natural world close to home.”―Library Journal Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, where her essays appear weekly. Her work has also appeared in Guernica, Literary Hub, Proximity, and River Teeth, among others. She was the founding editor of Chapter 16, the daily literary publication of Humanities Tennessee, and is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Carolina. She lives in Nashville.
A TODAY Show #ReadWithJenna December 2019 Book Club Pick
Named a "Best Book of the Year" by New Statesman, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, and Washington Independent Review of Books
Southern Book Prize Finalist
An O, the Oprah Magazine July 2019 Pick
A Publishers Weekly "Pick of the Week"
An Indie Next Selection for July 2019
An Indies Introduce Selection for Summer/Fall 2019
A 2019 Okra Pick
From New York Times opinion writer Margaret Renkl comes an unusual, captivating portrait of a family―and of the cycles of joy and grief that inscribe human lives within the natural world.
Growing up in Alabama, Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents―her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father―and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child’s transition to caregiver.
And here, braided into the overall narrative, Renkl offers observations on the world surrounding her suburban Nashville home. Ringing with rapture and heartache, these essays convey the dignity of bluebirds and rat snakes, monarch butterflies and native bees. As these two threads haunt and harmonize with each other, Renkl suggests that there is astonishment to be found in common things: in what seems ordinary, in what we all share. For in both worlds―the natural one and our own―“the shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is only love’s own twin.”
Gorgeously illustrated by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl, Late Migrations is an assured and memorable debut.
Important addition to the canon of books about grief. It is a gift when a writer brings a new perspective to a challenge we have faced since the dawn of human life — the challenge of loss in the face of love and the grief that follows. Margaret Renkl offers us a new perspective in “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss” a collection of short essays and nearly poetic writing that move around the issue looking for a new way in.Renkl explores both the world outside her home, filled with rat snakes, bees, and her beloved birds, and ties it into the loss of her own parents. She ties all this together, stating the obvious in new ways that connect life and death in a natural context, but not diminishing the impact. “The shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is love’s own twin” (7).Her description of the natural world is centered around her own backyard in Tennessee, something that most of us can relate to easier than the wilderness explorer. In the chapter, “Late Migration,” Renkl tells us about her desire to attract monarch butterflies. She notes there were once over a billion monarch butterflies in North America, and now there are less than 100 million. “Once upon a time, even a loss of that magnitude might have caused me only a flicker of concern, the kind of thing I trusted scientists to straighten out. But I am old enough now to have buried many of my loved ones, and loss is too often something I can do nothing about.”Since she can do something about this problem, she plants a garden to attract monarch butterflies. Although they do not come at first, a later migrating group comes at the end of summer. She notes that monarchs migrate like birds, but it takes four to five generations of butterflies to make it. No single butterfly makes the entire migration. The natural world follows its own path.Her love of the natural world around her reminds her of the fragility of life and the cruelty of the world. But knowing that death is part of a natural cycle does not make it easier to address. In “After the Fall,” a single powerful page addressing grief and offering hope, Renkl writes about grief:“This talk of making peace with it. Of feeling it and then finding a way through. Of closure. It’s all nonsense.Here is what no one told me about grief: you inhabit it like a skin. Everywhere you go, you wear grief under your clothes. Everything you see, you see through it, like a film.”Grief changes people. But change is not always bad and with time those changes create a different person who can still live.“What I mean is, time offers your old self a new shape. What I mean is, you are the old, ungrieving you, and you are also the new ruined you. You are both, and you will always be both. There is nothing to fear. There is nothing at all to fear. Walkout into the springtime, and look: the birds welcome you with a chorus. The flowers turn their faces to your face. The last of last year’s leaves, still damp in the shadows, smell ripe and faintly of fall” (281).Part of that new person is the memories that we carry with us. Memories become unreliable for accuracy as we move on. “All these images are absolutely clear, but I know better than to trust them. I have turned them over so often the edges have become soft and worn, their contours wholly unreliable” (98). While our memories do change, I only see them as becoming unreliable in their factual accuracy. We begin to alter those memories so they become true to our experiences more than the facts. Truth is not always found in the facts.Renkl’s short essays reflect a range of writing styles. From natural descriptions to what can best be described as prose poetry (e.g. “Redbird, Sundown), making this a fascinating read. She even includes an essay called “The Imperfect-Family Beatitudes” that offers a humorous look at families and ends with an exhortation to tell your children you love them every time you leave them.Renkl is an outstanding writer who has published in a number of publications, especially the New York Times, but this is her first book. After the success of this book, we can hope to see more come from her. It is a rare voice that can address grief and yet offer hope.“Human beings are creatures made for joy. Against all evidence, we tell ourselves that grief and loneliness and despair are tragedies, unwelcome variations from the pleasure and calm and safety that in the right way of the world would form the firm ground of our being. In the fairy tale, we tell ourselves, darkness holds nothing resembling a gift.What we feel always contains its own truth, but it is not the only truth, and darkness almost always harbors some bit of goodness tucked out of sight, waiting for an unexpected light to shine, to reveal it in its deepest hiding place” (186).Renkl excels at finding that unexpected light in the darkness. As a result, she has added an indispensable volume to the library of grief, loss, and love.Nothing short of beautiful and inspirational The author came to an independent bookstore in my town for a reading and signing and after meeting her and hearing her read from it, I devoured the book in one or two sittings. I found her writing to be lyrical, poetic and oh so beautiful. I found the characters to be so vividly portrayed that I felt I could visualize them and imagine the voices in the conversations. I found the interweaving of the stories of death in the natural world and death in the immediate family of the author to be inspired. The author’s stories and experiences made me feel less afraid, less alone, and less unique in the difficulties of dealing with role reversal in caring for an elderly parent. I have also been enjoying Renkl’s NYT columns. Her piece last summer about menopause was genius. I have purchased a half dozen copies and given them as gifts and plan to give more as gifts when the holidays come around. I can’t wait to read what she writes next.Gentle in its hard truths, a reading journey worth taking A book of days, of stories, of wonderful prose and observations, I am intensely glad Ms. Renkl wrote this book. Thank you for a gift I will read again and again.
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