Bloomsbury Wildlife The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating Anniversary Edition.

by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

Bloomsbury Wildlife The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating Anniversary Edition ABISBOOK Bloomsbury Wildlife.

192 pages, Hardcover

Published July 3, 2025

About the author

Elisabeth Tova Bailey’s essays and short stories have been published in The Missouri Review, Northwest Review, and the Sycamore Review. She has received several Pushcart Prize nominations and a Notable Essay Listing in Best American Essays. She lives in Maine.

Reviews

[Katy Wheatley · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the grip of a debilitating and mysterious illness, the author is left bedridden and bereft for her former life. She is not even at home. Discovering a snail in a pot of violets a visiting friend leaves by her bed, she begins to watch it and in her curiosity is her salvation.

This is beautifully written and surprisingly fascinating about the life of snails. I loved it, but I also wanted more from it because I am a deeply curious person. It wasn't that I wanted to know more about snails. I think the author pitches the amount of snail content perfectly. You learn enough as a curious layperson without being bogged down in scientific minutiae. It's that I wanted to understand more about the author, and she does a very good and clearly purposeful job of only telling you enough to make the book hang together whilst still retaining her privacy. It did leave me with a lot of questions though.

[Kellie Hoffman · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book held so much promise on the cover & I was very excited to read it, selecting it over others from a pile of recently purchased books. Sadly, it did not live up to its promise for me and I did not enjoy the reading experience as hoped. I feel like I missed something as so many others have given this five star reviews & glowing compliments. Perhaps I was not in the ‘right frame of mind’ but I just couldn’t summon enthusiasm for the short chapters full of other people’s quotes. The authors connection with the snail did not translate for me and I really had difficulty connecting with anything in the book, including the metaphor. I will donate this to our local library where others may choose if they want to invest time with this book without having to pay for the privilege. It just didn’t work for me.