What do you think?
Rate this book
Children and Other Wild Animals
In Children and Other Wild Animals, bestselling novelist, Brian Doyle, describes encounters with astounding beings of every sort and shape. These true tales of animals and human mammals (generally the smaller sizes, but here and there elders and jumbos) delightfully blur the line between the two.
In these short vignettes, Doyle explores the seethe of life on this startling planet, the astonishing variety of our riveting companions, and the joys available to us when we pause, see, savor, and celebrate, the small things that are not small in the least.
Doyle’s trademark quirky prose is at once lyrical, daring, and refreshing; his essays are poignant but not pap, sharp but not sermons, and revelatory at every turn. Throughout there is humor, and humility, and a palpable sense of wonder, with passages of reflection so true, and hard earned, they make you stop and reread a line, a paragraph, a page.
Children and Other Wild Animals gathers previously unpublished work with selections that have appeared in Orion, The Sun, Utne Reader, High Country News, and The American Scholar, as well as Best American Essays and Best American Nature and Science Writing (“Fishering”).
“The Creature Beyond the Mountain,” Doyle’s paean to the mighty and mysterious sturgeon of the Pacific Northwest, won the John Burroughs Award for Outstanding Nature Essay. As he notes in that tribute to all things 'sturgeonness': “Sometimes you want to see the forest, and not the trees. Sometimes you find yourself starving for what’s true, and not about a person, but about all people. This is how religion, and fascism, were born, but it’s also why music is the greatest of arts, and why stories matter, and why we all cannot help staring at fires and great waters.”
In these short vignettes, Doyle explores the seethe of life on this startling planet, the astonishing variety of our riveting companions, and the joys available to us when we pause, see, savor, and celebrate, the small things that are not small in the least.
Doyle’s trademark quirky prose is at once lyrical, daring, and refreshing; his essays are poignant but not pap, sharp but not sermons, and revelatory at every turn. Throughout there is humor, and humility, and a palpable sense of wonder, with passages of reflection so true, and hard earned, they make you stop and reread a line, a paragraph, a page.
Children and Other Wild Animals gathers previously unpublished work with selections that have appeared in Orion, The Sun, Utne Reader, High Country News, and The American Scholar, as well as Best American Essays and Best American Nature and Science Writing (“Fishering”).
“The Creature Beyond the Mountain,” Doyle’s paean to the mighty and mysterious sturgeon of the Pacific Northwest, won the John Burroughs Award for Outstanding Nature Essay. As he notes in that tribute to all things 'sturgeonness': “Sometimes you want to see the forest, and not the trees. Sometimes you find yourself starving for what’s true, and not about a person, but about all people. This is how religion, and fascism, were born, but it’s also why music is the greatest of arts, and why stories matter, and why we all cannot help staring at fires and great waters.”
176 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2014
20 people are currently reading
667 people want to read
About the author
Brian Doyle
60 books728 followersDoyle's essays and poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The American Scholar, Orion, Commonweal, and The Georgia Review, among other magazines and journals, and in The Times of London, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Kansas City Star, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Ottawa Citizen, and Newsday, among other newspapers. He was a book reviewer for The Oregonian and a contributing essayist to both Eureka Street magazine and The Age newspaper in Melbourne, Australia.
Doyle's essays have also been reprinted in:
* the Best American Essays anthologies of 1998, 1999, 2003, and 2005;
* in Best Spiritual Writing 1999, 2001, 2002, and 2005; and
* in Best Essays Northwest (2003);
* and in a dozen other anthologies and writing textbooks.
As for awards and honors, he had three startling children, an incomprehensible and fascinating marriage, and he was named to the 1983 Newton (Massachusetts) Men's Basketball League all-star team, and that was a really tough league.
Doyle delivered many dozens of peculiar and muttered speeches and lectures and rants about writing and stuttering grace at a variety of venues, among them Australian Catholic University and Xavier College (both in Melbourne, Australia), Aquinas Academy (in Sydney, Australia); Washington State, Seattle Pacific, Oregon, Utah State, Concordia, and Marylhurst universities; Boston, Lewis & Clark, and Linfield colleges; the universities of Utah, Oregon, Pittsburgh, and Portland; KBOO radio (Portland), ABC and 3AW radio (Australia); the College Theology Society; National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation," and in the PBS film Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero (2002).
Doyle was a native of New York, was fitfully educated at the University of Notre Dame, and was a magazine and newspaper journalist in Portland, Boston, and Chicago for more than twenty years. He was living in Portland, Oregon, with his family when died at age 60 from complications related to a brain tumor.
Doyle's essays have also been reprinted in:
* the Best American Essays anthologies of 1998, 1999, 2003, and 2005;
* in Best Spiritual Writing 1999, 2001, 2002, and 2005; and
* in Best Essays Northwest (2003);
* and in a dozen other anthologies and writing textbooks.
As for awards and honors, he had three startling children, an incomprehensible and fascinating marriage, and he was named to the 1983 Newton (Massachusetts) Men's Basketball League all-star team, and that was a really tough league.
Doyle delivered many dozens of peculiar and muttered speeches and lectures and rants about writing and stuttering grace at a variety of venues, among them Australian Catholic University and Xavier College (both in Melbourne, Australia), Aquinas Academy (in Sydney, Australia); Washington State, Seattle Pacific, Oregon, Utah State, Concordia, and Marylhurst universities; Boston, Lewis & Clark, and Linfield colleges; the universities of Utah, Oregon, Pittsburgh, and Portland; KBOO radio (Portland), ABC and 3AW radio (Australia); the College Theology Society; National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation," and in the PBS film Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero (2002).
Doyle was a native of New York, was fitfully educated at the University of Notre Dame, and was a magazine and newspaper journalist in Portland, Boston, and Chicago for more than twenty years. He was living in Portland, Oregon, with his family when died at age 60 from complications related to a brain tumor.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 64 reviews
March 4, 2022
There is something about Brian Doyle’s words that strike a very sensitive chord. They vibrate in the deepest part of me. The part that we tend to forget about so easily as we age. I can’t quite name this attribute, but it is related to our connection to the natural world. Despite all our wisdom, technology, greed, and need for control and even power, we are still creatures of the earth along with all the other myriad species of the animal kingdom. How often we forget this. It’s intriguing to think that those things that make us most human – our basic needs and desires – are exactly what connects us most closely to our animal brothers and sisters. And when we have lost sight of those things, we have lost sight of something very elemental. Something vital.
“Sometimes you want to see the forest and not the trees. Sometimes you find yourself starving for what’s true not about a person but about all people. This is how religion and fascism were born, but it’s also why music is the greatest of arts, and why stories matter, and why we all cannot help staring at fires and great waters.”
Reading Brian Doyle makes me feel like a kid all over again. He reminds me that it is truly a gift to be alive. There are always new things to discover. One can look at the world and all that is in it with the wonder of a child. All we need to do is empty our minds of all the extraneous junk once in a while and remember what is most important. I am sure that he would tell us to do it now, before it’s too late; for his time on earth ended too soon, at the age of sixty. It’s hard to imagine that a man that was so full of zest for life is no longer here to share it with us. No matter what he wrote about in this set of essays, he was full of enthusiasm and love and grace. And humility. Always that. He has loads of information and shares it like a friend over coffee. He never overburdens with the facts. Actually, at times, he gets so carried away with his feelings for something, that he shares just enough of the basics for the reader to want to explore more on his or her own. Whether chatting about his love for birds, his joy in raising children or the mysteries of the greatest creatures of the ocean, Doyle’s curiosity and reverence is contagious. His descriptions are vivid and often humorous. If I wasn’t shedding a tear here and there while reading this, I was smiling or quietly laughing.
“Human beings are attached to the world by intricate strings of memory and desire. We make of our sensory impressions the stuff of a life, a career, a love affair, a story. Birds are players in this drama; they flit about us, encapsulating the ways that we feel, acting as poems, as prayers. I once cried at the sight of a sparrow’s defiant, thin-legged stance because it was a speck of unbearable delight in a black time.”
“We did not see deer, although we did see mats of grass which sure looked like places where deer would nap like uncles after big meals, sprawled on their sides with their vests unbuttoned, snoring like heroes.”
Obviously, I’ve never met Brian Doyle. In fact, at this moment, I’ve only read one novel in addition to this collection of vignettes. Yet here I sit grieving over the loss of him. If I really think about it, however, I think I’m mourning the loss of something within myself. Doyle has just managed to point it out so beautifully and with such clarity. For that I am grateful to him. So I guess it’s not exactly him that I miss since we never knew one another; rather it’s the fact that I miss people like him. Like the child I once was with the world ahead of me to discover.
“Most of what we know is that we don’t know hardly anything, which cheers me up wonderfully. The world is still stuffed with astonishments beyond our wildest imagining…”
“What really do we know well about any creature, including and most of all ourselves, and how is it that even though we know painfully little about anything we often manage world-wrenching hubris about our wisdom?”
World-wrenching hubris indeed.
“Sometimes you want to see the forest and not the trees. Sometimes you find yourself starving for what’s true not about a person but about all people. This is how religion and fascism were born, but it’s also why music is the greatest of arts, and why stories matter, and why we all cannot help staring at fires and great waters.”
Reading Brian Doyle makes me feel like a kid all over again. He reminds me that it is truly a gift to be alive. There are always new things to discover. One can look at the world and all that is in it with the wonder of a child. All we need to do is empty our minds of all the extraneous junk once in a while and remember what is most important. I am sure that he would tell us to do it now, before it’s too late; for his time on earth ended too soon, at the age of sixty. It’s hard to imagine that a man that was so full of zest for life is no longer here to share it with us. No matter what he wrote about in this set of essays, he was full of enthusiasm and love and grace. And humility. Always that. He has loads of information and shares it like a friend over coffee. He never overburdens with the facts. Actually, at times, he gets so carried away with his feelings for something, that he shares just enough of the basics for the reader to want to explore more on his or her own. Whether chatting about his love for birds, his joy in raising children or the mysteries of the greatest creatures of the ocean, Doyle’s curiosity and reverence is contagious. His descriptions are vivid and often humorous. If I wasn’t shedding a tear here and there while reading this, I was smiling or quietly laughing.
“Human beings are attached to the world by intricate strings of memory and desire. We make of our sensory impressions the stuff of a life, a career, a love affair, a story. Birds are players in this drama; they flit about us, encapsulating the ways that we feel, acting as poems, as prayers. I once cried at the sight of a sparrow’s defiant, thin-legged stance because it was a speck of unbearable delight in a black time.”
“We did not see deer, although we did see mats of grass which sure looked like places where deer would nap like uncles after big meals, sprawled on their sides with their vests unbuttoned, snoring like heroes.”
Obviously, I’ve never met Brian Doyle. In fact, at this moment, I’ve only read one novel in addition to this collection of vignettes. Yet here I sit grieving over the loss of him. If I really think about it, however, I think I’m mourning the loss of something within myself. Doyle has just managed to point it out so beautifully and with such clarity. For that I am grateful to him. So I guess it’s not exactly him that I miss since we never knew one another; rather it’s the fact that I miss people like him. Like the child I once was with the world ahead of me to discover.
“Most of what we know is that we don’t know hardly anything, which cheers me up wonderfully. The world is still stuffed with astonishments beyond our wildest imagining…”
“What really do we know well about any creature, including and most of all ourselves, and how is it that even though we know painfully little about anything we often manage world-wrenching hubris about our wisdom?”
World-wrenching hubris indeed.
December 22, 2014
Do your soul a favor and read anything by Brian Doyle.
March 3, 2016
This book could also be titled: Love Letters to Mother Earth. Short, poignant vignettes about animals, nature, children, and the small moments of joy and wonder that flit through our every day lives. Sometimes funny, sometimes breathtaking, sometimes challenging, sometimes experimental, sometimes cloying, but in a charming way. I liked the first half better than the second, but really the whole collection is fantastic.
December 5, 2017
Reading this book made me happy to be alive. These essays are like short prayers that remind me to stop and look and notice all the wonders that exist in the world. Doyle’s grace and excitement overflows in his writing no matter the subject, and he is not self-indulgent or overly intellectual. His writing is outward looking and tender. Doyle was a writer who seemed to live with both arms flung open, ready to embrace the world with his attention and wonder.
I wish I could quote the whole book in my review because it is filled with lovely sentences and scenes to savor and savor again. But I will go with half a quote from “The Moment,” because I think it encompasses the purpose of the book:
“We have so many delicious moments in life, and they rush past so hurriedly, in such a mist and blur, that we should pause sometimes, I think, and choose one, and stroll back to it, just for a few minutes…”
Each essay is just this sort of pause to recall and remember these moments, to have them again, to love and laugh and be thankful for them and to share the joy of stories with others.
I wish I could quote the whole book in my review because it is filled with lovely sentences and scenes to savor and savor again. But I will go with half a quote from “The Moment,” because I think it encompasses the purpose of the book:
“We have so many delicious moments in life, and they rush past so hurriedly, in such a mist and blur, that we should pause sometimes, I think, and choose one, and stroll back to it, just for a few minutes…”
Each essay is just this sort of pause to recall and remember these moments, to have them again, to love and laugh and be thankful for them and to share the joy of stories with others.
August 6, 2020
Brian Doyle’s short essays riff on childhood, fatherhood, and the wild, wondrous world. His writing is full of of awe and wonder, humor and humility.
Doyle reminds you of the best kind of priest (only imagine him at a cookout, maybe a beer or two in) chatting with everyone and floating ideas for homilies. His essays combine an impressive body of knowledge and a keen insight into humanity with a conversational ease, infused with a vocabulary of faith and a deep respect and affection for the all the (human and nonhuman) creatures around him.
That said, Doyle’s Whitman-esque sentence length can drive a reader a little bit crazy for the length of a book! His writing style is…exuberant, and short on commas. But there are so many memorable moments and insights and paragraphs worth underlining in this book that that’s a very minor complaint. This is such a great collection of nature writing.
Doyle reminds you of the best kind of priest (only imagine him at a cookout, maybe a beer or two in) chatting with everyone and floating ideas for homilies. His essays combine an impressive body of knowledge and a keen insight into humanity with a conversational ease, infused with a vocabulary of faith and a deep respect and affection for the all the (human and nonhuman) creatures around him.
That said, Doyle’s Whitman-esque sentence length can drive a reader a little bit crazy for the length of a book! His writing style is…exuberant, and short on commas. But there are so many memorable moments and insights and paragraphs worth underlining in this book that that’s a very minor complaint. This is such a great collection of nature writing.
April 27, 2019
I love this so much. No matter what problems I am facing, the essays remind me of the infinite little happy things in our lives. Somehow chuckle and tears manage to blend perfectly in the pages of this book. Highly recommend!
April 4, 2015
This collection is home to my favorite Brian Doyle essay, Joyas Volardores. I want to print it out and roll it up and leave it in mailboxes all over my city.
Brian Doyle will fill you with awe and wonder.
Brian Doyle will fill you with awe and wonder.
May 1, 2022
Full of birds and fish and air and trees and badgers and moments and laughs and wonder and dogs and twins and mischief and hanging cars and moose poop and hummingbirds and colors and questions and and and …
June 12, 2019
Honestly, you shouldn’t even ask me, because at this point I believe Doyle can do no wrong.
November 9, 2022
I wish I had discovered Doyle years ago, so I could have read this book multiple times by now.
A joyous celebration of nature, the wild, and family. Brilliant .
A joyous celebration of nature, the wild, and family. Brilliant .
June 11, 2018
If I had a spirit guide it might be Brian Doyle. The hardest part about reading one of his books the first time is that when it is over that's one less Brian Doyle book I get to read for the first time.
November 19, 2014
How can you not love Brian Doyle. His essays bring you to your knees. He shares his childhood and parenting memories and foibles. He is passionate about our care of the creatures with which we share this earth. I have heard him speak several times. His passion never fails, in print and in person.
November 4, 2022
Brian Doyle's spirit infused everything he wrote, and it's hard not to be infected by his enthusiasm for the world around us -- impossible not to see things just a little differently after reading his work. Often, while reading his essays, I realize he's put into words something I've never been able to put my finger on, a hazy thought he's made clear. All this, plus humor and a dash of piety.
From essays about his infant son's emergency heart surgery to a friend's "elkometer" through to otters, foxes, birds, and "Things My Kids Have Said That They Do Not Know I Know They Said" (including "The best way to eat a worm is to have another kid do it"), Doyle tackles (it seems) every living thing he's come across in his life. Reading one of his essays is like trying to keep up with a fast guide through familiar territory who points out all the stuff you missed: "...The rufous-sided hummingbird, the common tiny hummer of the Pacific Northwest, has a heartbeat of some three hundred beats per minute--about five times as fast as the human heartbeat...The implicactions of this heartbeat intrigue me. Does the hummingbird live faster than we do? Does the hummingbird literally live in a different time zone? Time must be made of a different liquid for the hummingbird, since he goes through it so quickly...." ("Reading the Birds").
Fortunately for us, he gives us some insight into what he believes makes a piece of writing "The Greatest Nature Essay Ever," which "Would begin with an image so startling and lovely and wonderous that you would stop riffling through the rest of the mail, take your jacket off, sit down at the table, adjust your spectacles, tell the dog to lie *down,* tell the kids to make their *own* sandwiches for heavensake, that's why god gave you *hands,* and read straight through the piece, marveling that you had indeed seen or smelled or heard *exactly* that, but never quite articulated it that way, or seen or heard it articulated that way, and you think, *man, this is why I read nature essays, to be started and moved like that, wow.*"
Which is exactly how I feel every time I read any kind of essay by Brian Doyle.
From essays about his infant son's emergency heart surgery to a friend's "elkometer" through to otters, foxes, birds, and "Things My Kids Have Said That They Do Not Know I Know They Said" (including "The best way to eat a worm is to have another kid do it"), Doyle tackles (it seems) every living thing he's come across in his life. Reading one of his essays is like trying to keep up with a fast guide through familiar territory who points out all the stuff you missed: "...The rufous-sided hummingbird, the common tiny hummer of the Pacific Northwest, has a heartbeat of some three hundred beats per minute--about five times as fast as the human heartbeat...The implicactions of this heartbeat intrigue me. Does the hummingbird live faster than we do? Does the hummingbird literally live in a different time zone? Time must be made of a different liquid for the hummingbird, since he goes through it so quickly...." ("Reading the Birds").
Fortunately for us, he gives us some insight into what he believes makes a piece of writing "The Greatest Nature Essay Ever," which "Would begin with an image so startling and lovely and wonderous that you would stop riffling through the rest of the mail, take your jacket off, sit down at the table, adjust your spectacles, tell the dog to lie *down,* tell the kids to make their *own* sandwiches for heavensake, that's why god gave you *hands,* and read straight through the piece, marveling that you had indeed seen or smelled or heard *exactly* that, but never quite articulated it that way, or seen or heard it articulated that way, and you think, *man, this is why I read nature essays, to be started and moved like that, wow.*"
Which is exactly how I feel every time I read any kind of essay by Brian Doyle.
January 6, 2021
4.5 stars. Doyle is one of my favorite essayists. His reflections on nature manage to incorporate humor, amazement, wonder, and a sense of awe in a world more expansive than we can truly comprehend. In this collection, he writes some on nature, some on children -- but the ones that really sing for me are the ones where the two subjects merge and he is either writing about his experiences in nature as a child or his experiences as a parent watching his children experience nature.
I highlighted a number of passages in his essays - here is a selection from an essay on raptors to give you a feel for the beauty of his writing.
"Maybe being raptorous is in some way rapturous. Maybe what the word rapture really means is an attention so ferocious that you see the miracle of the world as the miracle it is. Maybe that is what happens to saints and mystics who float up into the air and soar beyond sight and vanish finally into the glare of the sun."
I highlighted a number of passages in his essays - here is a selection from an essay on raptors to give you a feel for the beauty of his writing.
"Maybe being raptorous is in some way rapturous. Maybe what the word rapture really means is an attention so ferocious that you see the miracle of the world as the miracle it is. Maybe that is what happens to saints and mystics who float up into the air and soar beyond sight and vanish finally into the glare of the sun."
April 12, 2019
This is a very good book of essays about life, animals and the Pacific Northwest. Having been born and raised in Oregon and spending my last years in Washington State, I marvel at the nature I have been allowed to witness. He mentions William Stafford in one of the stories, a gentle poet that I was privileged to meet in College. He writes of the relationship between a Bishop and his parrot. There is a lot about life and loss, two elements come together more often that some of us of age would like. My generation has not done a great job of protecting the planet and the elements of nature we have observed and loved over our lifetimes. Read the book for the prose and the run-on sentences that become bolder, more descriptive and poignant with each rereading.
February 10, 2020
This is one of the most beautiful books I've read in a long time. Doyle writes lovingly of all creatures: plant and animal (including human children). He is funny, poignant and respectful. His writing is superb and deliciously funny. The book consists of short essays, actually meditations on life. I read this book at a coffeehouse and laughed out loud (and drew attention from others) and teared up. I was so taken with his writing that I wanted to write to him and let him know what an impact he had on me but I found out that he died a couple of years ago from a brain tumor. Children and Other Wild Animals is a book I will give to many people.
July 11, 2018
I’d put off reading Brian Doyle until I actually moved to the Pacific Northwest. Then, upon hearing of his death last year, I added a few of his titles to my TBR list. Needing a local author to complete a reading challenge I grabbed this lovely collection of essays. Now, I’m hooked! Thoughtful, bust-a-gut funny, devastatingly sad, spiritually luminous: I can’t find the right amount of adjectives to describe what I found between the covers of “Children”. I will now read everything Mr. Doyle left behind, and weep when it finally hits me that there will be nothing else to come.
December 26, 2022
Brian Doyle is the only author whose writing I would describe as unabashedly exuberant and his style is just perfectly suited to short essays.
“if we never take our kids to the little strips of forests, the tiny shards of beaches, the ragged forgotten corner thickets with beer bottles glinting in the duff, they’ll never even imagine a fox, and what kind of world is that, where kids don’t imagine foxes? We spend so much time mourning and battling for a world where kids can see foxes that we forget you don’t have to see foxes. You have to imagine them though. If you stop imagining them, then they are all dead, and what kind of world is that, where all the foxes are dead?"
“if we never take our kids to the little strips of forests, the tiny shards of beaches, the ragged forgotten corner thickets with beer bottles glinting in the duff, they’ll never even imagine a fox, and what kind of world is that, where kids don’t imagine foxes? We spend so much time mourning and battling for a world where kids can see foxes that we forget you don’t have to see foxes. You have to imagine them though. If you stop imagining them, then they are all dead, and what kind of world is that, where all the foxes are dead?"
January 22, 2023
You read this book, and you begin to see the patterns of Doyle, the recurring subjects and motifs, even the style, the crashing cascading spilling building piles of adjectives, and maybe you think well, four stars, these are good but are they five stars good, probably no, and then you remember that there aren’t any more Brian Doyle essays, or a Brian Doyle even, and it seems too dark too early these days to not love everything you read and everyone who wrote it, so yes, five stars for this book. Five stars for you, too.
June 26, 2023
While there are some gems in here, this collection also feels like there’s a lot of navel gazing filler. Many of the vignettes felt like cheeky self-importance, or like a man trying to get their clever memories down. They locked arc or greater resonance. I found this especially disappointing when Doyle himself once said that a mediocre essay is about the author and a great essay is about all of us. Too many shorts in this collection are about the author for my liking.
March 31, 2025
I have loved every book I’ve read by this amazing author. This one is no exception. What I most appreciate is his gift for blending faith, humor, realism, and stewardship into short essays that run the gamut of emotional experiences and expressions. All are a delight and so heartwarming. This is another book that I can easily see myself returning to time and time again, enjoying it every bit as much as I have the first time through.
July 17, 2025
4.5, rounded up because . . . I love Brian Doyle's writing and humor and philosophy and perspectives, and although like the best collections of short essays some were good, some were great, and some were breathtaking, overall this is a wonderful treasure. Doyle's connections and reflections on the natural world, and the relationships of humans to that world, and to one another, are often simply magical. More Doyle to be read soon.
April 14, 2018
Certainly some pleasing moments of that slice of life appreciation of simply being alive in this crazy wonderful world.... Learned some interesting factoids about hawks, anchovies, whale hearts.. Loved In Otter Worlds .... some of it seemed.. too eager.. like lonely old folks just teeming on the edge of chuckling.. anticipating the outward joy of just being... blah blah blah
June 10, 2018
Brian Doyle’s writing is something to savor. Half poetry, half conspiratorial letter from a friend, half poignant essay by a deft observer of people and nature (yes, three halves make more than a whole, feels appropriate here), the short pieces compiled in this short collection made my eyes sting again and again. How sad to find an author you really love, only to learn that he’s passed away?
September 18, 2018
I was astonished by how much I loved this book. I had never read anything by Doyle before but now I have no choice but to devour it all. Even if nature is not your passion, this book will speak deeply to you. There is so much joy and gentleness and wide-open love in it, and it will surprise you with laughter and tears over and over again.
January 13, 2021
This collection of essays felt very hit or miss to me. I love Doyle's writing style (especially in spiritual reflections), but some of his never-ending sentences/paragraphs got me a bit mixed up. Some of the essays were gens, but I related much better to the second section of the book (focused on the children). The nature essays in the first section were not my cup of tea.
November 16, 2019
So much beautiful writing in one little book nugget. I love essays and I love animals and I love children. I wept and laughed out loud simultaneously several times in this book. Brian Doyle is a master.
January 2, 2020
This book isn't for everyone because most people are looking for a plot-driven story. This isn't it. However, the writing, albeit rambling and un-grammatical, is vivid and beautiful. That is what makes the book.
Thanks for the recommendation, Amanda.
Thanks for the recommendation, Amanda.
September 23, 2021
I truly believe that everybody should read this book, I can't imagine someone not liking it.
It made me laugh and smile the whole way through and was packed full of bits of wisdom that were basically falling out of the book screaming "LISTEN!"
I really loved it.
It made me laugh and smile the whole way through and was packed full of bits of wisdom that were basically falling out of the book screaming "LISTEN!"
I really loved it.
May 24, 2024
Brian Doyle was a colleague in my field. Different institutions. It was a tragedy to lose him. But, his talent and words live on, thankfully. This work, these words made me swoon with joy and amazement at the expression and creativity.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 64 reviews