The Faraway Nearby (ALA Notable Books for Adults)

About this book

This personal lyrical narrative about storytelling and empathy from award winner Rebecca Solnit is a fitting companion to her beloved A Field Guide for Getting Lost In this exquisitely written new book by the author of A Paradise Built in Hell Rebecca Solnit explores the ways we make our lives out of stories and how we are connected by empathy by narrative by imagination. In the course of unpacking some of her own storiesof her mother and her decline from memory loss of a trip to Iceland of an illnessSolnit revisits fairytales and entertains other stories: about arctic explorers Che Guevara among the leper colonies and Mary Shelleys Dr. Frankenstein about warmth and coldness pain and kindness decay and transformation making art and making self. Woven together these stories create a map which charts the boundaries and territories of storytelling reframing who each of us is and how we might tell our story.