A reissue of this inspiring and heartbreaking memoir about family, empathy and the stories we tell about ourselves and others

A reissue of this inspiring and heartbreaking memoir about family, empathy and the stories we tell about ourselves and others Gifts come in many guises. One summer, Rebecca Solnit was given three boxes of ripening apricots, fruit from a neglected tree that her mother, gradually succumbing to memory loss, could no longer tend to. In this courageous, heartbreaking memoir, Solnit draws from this unexpected inheritance, weaving her own story into fairy tales and the lives of others. Encompassing the Marquis de Sade and Mary Shelley, explorers and monsters, a library of water in Iceland, and the depths of the Grand Canyon, The Faraway Nearby is a meditation on family, empathy, and the art of storytelling from a writer of limitless talent and imagination.

"Like Simon Schama, Solnit is a cultural historian in the desert-mystic mode, trailing ideas like swarms of butterflies" - Harper's

"Her writerly digressions obey shapely geometry, not random dérive. [The book is] artfully composed to a unifying scheme, which arises from Solnit's commitment to the storytelling craft and its necessary devices... Finely-wrought, intense and eloquent" - Guardian

"[A] passionately imperfect, extremely moving, original and humane book... Beautiful" - Literary Review

"Solnit is an explorer of the most exquisite kind, and a writer of the public road... We follow [her] mind, and what a mind it is, as vast and intriguing as a system of caverns and passageways opening into yet more caverns and passageways... Courageous" - Los Angeles Review of Book

"Gripping... Solnit deserves to be widely read" - Observer

"This is one of more beautifully written books we've read this year, filled with insight and gut-wrenching phrases. It is simple to read, yet generates complex reactions in the reader. If you enjoy stories and storytelling, this book will expand your understanding of them, and yourself" - Huffington Post

"An exhilarating form of literary cartography... wonderful" - Financial Times

"Solnit is asking us to pause, to consider the stories we tell ourselves about our lives, and to rethink the unstated assumptions of our own interior epics... a book-length primer in the uses of empathy... Rich [and] poignant" - The National

"The book is a lovely one that may bring many readers catharsis or consolation... One loves Solnit for her intelligence and her uprightness... Compelling and unique" - Slate

"Solnit has a winning prose style... Imaginative sentences are dropped here and there" - Herald

"This [book is] about stories - how we use them, the way we tell them. [It] moves between memories from her mother, to more classic fairy tales... you'll want to pen your own by the end" - Company

"Complicated, powerful, acutely, even painfully, personal... Solnit is profoundly antagonistic to formulaic production" - New Statesman

"An astute cultural critic" - National

"Here is Solnit at her most stimulating: pointed (even outraged), grounded in history, observing from the outside" - Slate

"Solnit fashions an elegant study in empathy through these meandering reflections" - Publishers Weekly

"The best chapter is on Iceland... her descriptions are wonderful" - Telegraph

"If you want a very different, lyrical take on how our lives are surrounded and defined by the stories we tell, Solnit's latest book is one of the finest of this or any year" - Huffington Post

"Solnit's words are exquisite; each chapter weaves a fabric of personal experience, literary or historical anecdote and intimate conversation" - Spencer Daily Reporter

"[It is] at once memoir, literary criticism, and inspirational touchstone, a meandering yet purposeful exploration of how we spin and follow stories, and of how they can lead us on a journey toward self-definition and empathy" - Barnes and Noble Review

"Solnit explores love and loss, warmth and coldness, the making of art and the remaking of the self - her distinctive, dense and at times stunning, storytelling hacks a path through the creative landscape" - We Love This Book

"[It is] a work of art with many layers, and readers will be rewarded each time they revisit this wonderful book" - Yorkshire Post

"Solnit is the champion of a style of writing that loops, circles, changes direction... In an era when much of western culture seem unwilling even to acknowledge the political challenges facing us, looming environmental crisis above all, Solnit is a role model" - Guardian

"[Solnit] presents us with a fascinating insight into the mind of a writer" - Northern Echo

"Pithy, beautifully observed, full of both truth and provocation... Solnit is an extraordinary artist" - Writers’ Hub

"A powerfully insightful and moving memoir... Fittingly for a book about the power of storytelling, Solnit is a terrific practitioner of the art" - The Lady

"Tracing the warp and weft of such a work, written with a moving flatness and vagrant wisdom, is a pleasure that frequently carries an almost tactile sensation, so brightly does it sparkle" - Review 31

"Brilliant [and] lavish" - New York Times

"An extraordinary piece of work in which the personal and philosophical meet" - Irish Times

"While the structure seems elegant, the writing never loses that real-life feeling that everything might fall apart at any moment" - Englewood Review of Books

"Solnit manages to do what many memoirists aspire to but few accomplish: she turns the personal into the universal" - Totally Dublin

"Provocative and extremely thought-provoking... it inspires nothing short of awe" - Irish Examiner

"This is narrative as jazz improve, each refrain exploring a new melody or theme. Yet familiar strains recur again and again. Metaphors abound, and Solnit seems to believe that all of life could be looked at as an allegory to be deciphered" - Guardian

"It's so rich, absorbing and inspirational that I keep putting it down to make notes or research a tangent" - Metro Scotland