The final book of my Goodreads challenge this year and what a beauty. I expected the book to be morose and bleak, I didn’t expect it to be so witty and sharp, to make me laugh and deeply empathise with Janina, the eccentric recluse that is this story’s main character. It cuts through a lot of preamble and gives her opinions refreshingly unfiltered. It’s humorous when it wants to be, beautiful when it can be, and inspiringly sorrowful when it needs to be.
The central theme of this book is life. In all of its forms and how it needs to be protected and valued, regardless of whether it is human life or not. There’s also a feeling of acceptance of ignorance pervading this book. Not accepting ignorance in the light of facts but acceptance in the light of what we do not know. A feeling that everything comes short when it comes to how we really feel, how the sun looks when it shines upon a lake, how the wind feels when it rushes through our hair. This is exemplified in this passage when Janina mentions why she doesn’t want to read a writer’s books.


I was afraid to open them. What if I found myself described in them in a way I couldn’t fathom? Or my favourite places, which for her are something completely different to what they are to me? In a way, people like her, those who wield a pen, can be dangerous. At once a suspicion of faker comes to mind – that such a person is not him or herself, but an eye that’s constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences; in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality – it’s inexpressibility.


This book is in many ways an homage to Blake, down to its very title. Blake is praised as a lover of animals and wildlife and his quotes are used throughout the book. It’s no surprise given that the theme of the book is care for all life, and this manifests as caring for wildlife also. To quote the book:


Man has a great responsibility towards wild Animals – to help them live their lives, and it’s his duty towards domesticated Animals to return their love and affection, for they give us far more than they receive from us.


I want to end this review, my final one of the year, with the quote that I still think about after finishing this book. A book that I’m sure to return to next year and experience again, with more practised eyes.


What about the deluge of butchered meat and fish that falls on our cities day by day like never-ending apocalyptic rain? The rain heralds slaughter, disease, collective madness, the obfuscation and contamination of the Mind. For no human heart is capable of bearing so much pain. The whole human psyche has developed to prevent Man from understanding what he’s really seeing. To stop the truth from reaching him by wrapping it in illusion, in idle chatter.