It would be easy to mistake Notebooks of the Mediterranean for a small book. It is not. It is a precise one.
An issue from the Hudson archive — essays, verse, and review of the season's most necessary books.
The prose moves like weather. Sentences gather, break, gather again. What looks at first like restraint is, on closer reading, a kind of generosity — the writer trusting the reader to feel the storm without being shown the lightning.
What the Book Knows
The prose moves like weather. Sentences gather, break, gather again. What looks at first like restraint is, on closer reading, a kind of generosity — the writer trusting the reader to feel the storm without being shown the lightning.
“What looks at first like restraint is, on closer reading, a kind of generosity.”
The prose moves like weather. Sentences gather, break, gather again. What looks at first like restraint is, on closer reading, a kind of generosity — the writer trusting the reader to feel the storm without being shown the lightning.
Character, here, is not announced; it accumulates. We learn who these people are the way we learn it of our neighbours: through small refusals, half-finished meals, the books left face-down on a kitchen chair.
A Question of Form
Character, here, is not announced; it accumulates. We learn who these people are the way we learn it of our neighbours: through small refusals, half-finished meals, the books left face-down on a kitchen chair.
It would be wrong to call Notebooks of the Mediterranean flawless. It is something better than that: alive.
