This week was unsettling — it brought reminders from friends both of the sudden sweetness of life, its unexpected blessings, and the other, far grimmer side.
I was unable to settle to the usual pleasurable round of reading the bestsellers of the day, and went looking restlessly for something else. There is, in truth, very little about reading that is comfortable, no matter how much we like to talk about “comfort reading”. Most books bring solace not by offering wisdom, but by unsettling you, taking you outside your own experience and sideways, perhaps, closer to moments of surprising understanding, where you least expected it.
Kyo Maclear’s Birds Art Life is such an unusual memoir. I almost passed it by, because every second
