What do you think?
Rate this book
Gentle and Fierce
"To be gentle is to resist the privileging of command above compassion. It is a quiet voice, a persistent whisper, calm and consoling. Ferocity is an armour, a forceful expression of resolve and protection. To be fierce is to know the intensity of the edges of feeling. It is the voice that calls out, intending to be heard."
Having spent her life in city environments, Vanessa Berry’s experiences with animals have largely been through encounters in urban settings, representations in art and the media, and as decorative ornaments or kitsch. The essays in Gentle and Fierce suggest that these encounters provide meaningful connections, at a time when the world we share with animals is threatened by environmental destruction. Berry responds with attentiveness and empathy to her subjects, which include a stuffed Kodiak bear, a Japanese island overrun with rabbits, a porcelain otter and Georges Perec’s cat. The essays are accompanied by illustrations which reflect her eye for detail and her background as an artist and zine maker.
Having spent her life in city environments, Vanessa Berry’s experiences with animals have largely been through encounters in urban settings, representations in art and the media, and as decorative ornaments or kitsch. The essays in Gentle and Fierce suggest that these encounters provide meaningful connections, at a time when the world we share with animals is threatened by environmental destruction. Berry responds with attentiveness and empathy to her subjects, which include a stuffed Kodiak bear, a Japanese island overrun with rabbits, a porcelain otter and Georges Perec’s cat. The essays are accompanied by illustrations which reflect her eye for detail and her background as an artist and zine maker.
- GenresNonfictionAnimals
192 pages, Paperback
Published July 1, 2021
4 people are currently reading
140 people want to read
About the author
Vanessa Berry
11 books23 followersVanessa Berry is a Sydney writer and artist who works with history, memory and archives. She is the author of the memoir Ninety 9 (Giramondo 2013), the essay collection Strawberry Hills Forever (Local Consumption 2007), and the zine I Am a Camera (1999–2017). Since 2012 she has been writing the blog Mirror Sydney, on which this book is based, exploring the city’s marginal places and undercurrents. Her zines and hand-drawn maps have been exhibited in the Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Gallery of Australia and the Museum of Sydney.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 21, 2021
‘Gentleness and ferocity are two qualities which guide my experiences.’
In this book of twenty essays accompanied by her own drawings, Vanessa Berry invites the reader into a world of reflection:
‘The eye that sees through time observes how the past braids into the present and how it shapes what is to come. Like the compound eye of an insect, it perceives all directions at once. Through this eye I see how memories curl and twist around details and moments, observing how they connect up and constellate.’
Those of us who live in urban environments often have limited contact with animals in their natural habitats. And, as Ms Berry reminds us, those habitats are shrinking. Animals, for many of us, are confined to household pets, occasional pests, representations in art and nature shows. Some representations in art are kitsch, but all carry memories (and sometimes special meaning) to those who own them.
I accompanied Ms Berry on her journey, through family possessions and stories, to a Japanese island overrun by rabbits, to the sinking horse in ‘The Neverending Story’ (which immediately takes me to ‘Black Beauty’), to Frank the Bear in the biology museum. Some essays triggered memories for me, and I found myself drifting into a different journey.
I enjoyed these essays and the accompanying illustrations. I enjoyed them for themselves and for the starting point they provided for my own memories. There’s one particular essay, ‘A Spider in My Cup’ which takes me back fifty years to my own nocturnal teenage years.
I finished the book and will be revisiting it. This is the second of Ms Berry’s books I have read an enjoyed. I can also recommend ‘Mirror Sydney: An Atlas of Reflections’.
‘To be gentle is to resist the privileging of command above compassion. It is a quiet voice, a persistent whisper, calm and consoling. Ferocity is an armour, a forceful expression of resolve and protection. To be fierce is to know the intensity of the edges of feeling. It is the voice that calls out, intending to be heard.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
In this book of twenty essays accompanied by her own drawings, Vanessa Berry invites the reader into a world of reflection:
‘The eye that sees through time observes how the past braids into the present and how it shapes what is to come. Like the compound eye of an insect, it perceives all directions at once. Through this eye I see how memories curl and twist around details and moments, observing how they connect up and constellate.’
Those of us who live in urban environments often have limited contact with animals in their natural habitats. And, as Ms Berry reminds us, those habitats are shrinking. Animals, for many of us, are confined to household pets, occasional pests, representations in art and nature shows. Some representations in art are kitsch, but all carry memories (and sometimes special meaning) to those who own them.
I accompanied Ms Berry on her journey, through family possessions and stories, to a Japanese island overrun by rabbits, to the sinking horse in ‘The Neverending Story’ (which immediately takes me to ‘Black Beauty’), to Frank the Bear in the biology museum. Some essays triggered memories for me, and I found myself drifting into a different journey.
I enjoyed these essays and the accompanying illustrations. I enjoyed them for themselves and for the starting point they provided for my own memories. There’s one particular essay, ‘A Spider in My Cup’ which takes me back fifty years to my own nocturnal teenage years.
I finished the book and will be revisiting it. This is the second of Ms Berry’s books I have read an enjoyed. I can also recommend ‘Mirror Sydney: An Atlas of Reflections’.
‘To be gentle is to resist the privileging of command above compassion. It is a quiet voice, a persistent whisper, calm and consoling. Ferocity is an armour, a forceful expression of resolve and protection. To be fierce is to know the intensity of the edges of feeling. It is the voice that calls out, intending to be heard.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
October 28, 2021
I loved how surprising each essay was in this collection of animal encounters. Berry’s style is one of detachment which contrasts beautifully with the intimacy of the moments and memories she writes about – gentle and fierce indeed. It’s hard to convey all that is in this varied collection but what shines through is Berry’s curiosity and her ability to pay attention, especially to the all-important minute details.
February 28, 2024
very lovely ! some great and some still great but less great essays … favourite was mink coat I think … sooo excited to meet her
May 27, 2022
Vanessa is an acquaintance of mine; someone I first met in my early twenties through the zine community, someone to be cherished. From her zines Laughter and the Sound of Teacups, I am a Camera and, later, her books of essays, Vanessa is an outstanding writer with unique observational abilities and stunning, melancholic prose.
Vanessa has had a profound impact on my own craft over the years and made me feel less afraid to be a writer, made me feel comfortable to lean into my awkwardness and my need to process things around me in a loud world that always wants instantaneous reactions, that it's okay to have a rich, inner life and to be yourself.
In this collection, Vanessa writes about different animals that have made an impression on her, but not in the standard way you might imagine. She writes about the hunt for the whereabouts of a taxidermy bear, anthropomorphized birds as a way to keep lost loved ones close, and imagining herself as a "junk bug" shedding layers of personal debris. Each of the 20 essays is accompanied by a cute line drawing from Vanessa herself
Some of these essays were more experimental than Vanessa's past collections and I loved that. It was delightful to see how hard she worked on these stories and how well seemingly innocuous things knitted together. I also loved the subtle, non-preachy environmental subtext throughout. Highly recommended.
Vanessa has had a profound impact on my own craft over the years and made me feel less afraid to be a writer, made me feel comfortable to lean into my awkwardness and my need to process things around me in a loud world that always wants instantaneous reactions, that it's okay to have a rich, inner life and to be yourself.
In this collection, Vanessa writes about different animals that have made an impression on her, but not in the standard way you might imagine. She writes about the hunt for the whereabouts of a taxidermy bear, anthropomorphized birds as a way to keep lost loved ones close, and imagining herself as a "junk bug" shedding layers of personal debris. Each of the 20 essays is accompanied by a cute line drawing from Vanessa herself
Some of these essays were more experimental than Vanessa's past collections and I loved that. It was delightful to see how hard she worked on these stories and how well seemingly innocuous things knitted together. I also loved the subtle, non-preachy environmental subtext throughout. Highly recommended.
Read
August 1, 2021Artists generally dislike having the sobriquet “quirky” attached to them. Rightly so: it is a pallid descriptor, all coy distance and faintly ridiculous camp. But I couldn’t help feeling it applied to Vanessa Berry’s fourth book, Gentle and Fierce. Here, Berry uses a number of characteristic techniques – along with a detached style – to reflect on animals, as well as her life as an author, zine-maker, daughter, and younger self.
Berry’s style relies on diffidence, on placing objects before subjects; as she writes in a chapter about a wildlife park in Germany, “I was external to the scenes going on around me, like a background figure”. This externality is mirrored in the syntax (Berry is fond of employing “for” as a conjunction) and sinuous circumspection of her prose; a typical sentence manages to combine the passive voice with a movement like a camera tracking back from its object until the subject finally comes into view: “On the other side of the path was an aviary inside which an owl stared from orange eyes the colour of marigolds.” (My italics.)
Tortuous and twee, this remove from Berry’s subjects – zoomed-out, lightly ambling – characterises not only the writing but the essays’ construction. Glass Fish gives us rooms within rooms; Rabbit Island, a “thought-path” that crosses continents; Frank the Bear, a museum corridor that doubles as a time machine. The most unusual occurs in Lassie Come Home, as Berry imagines a torch beam tracking across various objets mémoire through the dark. The most clever, Junk Bug, splices Kafka with an eye for ephemera reminiscent of Georges Perec.
Continue reading: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/...
Berry’s style relies on diffidence, on placing objects before subjects; as she writes in a chapter about a wildlife park in Germany, “I was external to the scenes going on around me, like a background figure”. This externality is mirrored in the syntax (Berry is fond of employing “for” as a conjunction) and sinuous circumspection of her prose; a typical sentence manages to combine the passive voice with a movement like a camera tracking back from its object until the subject finally comes into view: “On the other side of the path was an aviary inside which an owl stared from orange eyes the colour of marigolds.” (My italics.)
Tortuous and twee, this remove from Berry’s subjects – zoomed-out, lightly ambling – characterises not only the writing but the essays’ construction. Glass Fish gives us rooms within rooms; Rabbit Island, a “thought-path” that crosses continents; Frank the Bear, a museum corridor that doubles as a time machine. The most unusual occurs in Lassie Come Home, as Berry imagines a torch beam tracking across various objets mémoire through the dark. The most clever, Junk Bug, splices Kafka with an eye for ephemera reminiscent of Georges Perec.
Continue reading: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/...
August 14, 2022
I read the essay on Perec's Cat, and enjoyed it so much that I bought the whole collection. Having read the collection now, I think that it is probably the strongest essay in it. It is well-constructed and whimsical, weaving the author's personal history together with Perec's in an imaginative way.
The other essays in this collection are more personal. They are the author's exploration of herself, how she is in the world, the animal encounters she has had, and how they have shaped her. It is a wide-ranging collection, and pleasant to read, but I could not shake the feeling that I was reading a teenage work. There is something about the inward gaze of these, the focus on the self that comes across as young, and I found that many of them lacked the polish and craft that made Perec's Cat so enjoyable to read.
I would recommend this collection though. It is thoughtful, interesting, and has charming line drawings to accompany the essays.
The other essays in this collection are more personal. They are the author's exploration of herself, how she is in the world, the animal encounters she has had, and how they have shaped her. It is a wide-ranging collection, and pleasant to read, but I could not shake the feeling that I was reading a teenage work. There is something about the inward gaze of these, the focus on the self that comes across as young, and I found that many of them lacked the polish and craft that made Perec's Cat so enjoyable to read.
I would recommend this collection though. It is thoughtful, interesting, and has charming line drawings to accompany the essays.
partially-read
September 5, 2021I read the first four of these essays and quite enjoyed them, but I have so many other books to read at the moment...
I don't rate books I don't finish.
I don't rate books I don't finish.
Read
January 21, 2022beautiful
July 19, 2022
This book resonated very deeply for me and left a lasting impression on the way I see the world. Vanessa Berry is a beautiful writer.
Read
May 21, 2023dnf
April 15, 2023
Beautiful!!!!!!!!!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews