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Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-57131-334-8
Pages: 208
Publish Date: July 2012
Genre: Nonfiction
Things That Are
Essays
BY Amy Leach
A series of essays that progress from the tiniest Earth dwellers to far-flung celestial bodies—considering everything from the similarity of gods to donkeys, to the connection of exploding stars and exploding sea cucumbers—to rekindle our communion with the wild world. Concerned at once with realms animal and human, phenomenal and cosmic, the contents expand and confound the reader’s senses in delightful ways.
BEYOND THE BOOK
• Read this inspiring Q&A with Amy Leach.
• The book’s illustrator, Nate Christopherson, gets into the nitty-gritty details of his work.
• See the evolution of the cover of Things That Are.
• Listen to Leach’s pared-down bluegrass version of her essay”God" below.
• Amy read “Love-Lies-Bleeding” during an unconventional performance at Two Pony Gardens. Check out the footage below:
Like a descendant of Lewis Carroll and Emily Dickinson, Amy Leach brings new meaning to the world without us, and within. A reader entering this book to learn more about the universe will exit knowing much more about her own self. At once large and intimate, these essays introduce one of the most exciting and original writers in America.
—Yiyun Li, author of The Vagrants
• Amy read portions of her book on the campus of Webster University. Here is a clip from that reading:
“Even as she fashions a bit of bluesy satire to decry our abuse of nature, Leach is ecstatic in her knowledgeable, resplendent, and exhilarating contemplations of everything from subatomic particles to dust, Spinoza, donkeys, and caterpillars.”
—Donna Seaman, Booklist (Starred)
“This is a bonbon of a book.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“If Donald Barthelme had made nature documentaries, the commentary might have sounded like this. Lyrical and strange, this engaging book is filled with short tales whose most perfect sentences stay with you, especially in your dreams.”
“Life is chancy, she admits, and throughout these inventive, sparkling essays, she proposes that for us mortals the way to serenity is through laughter.”
“Every sentence in Things That Are is as pure and fanciful as frost patterns on a window pane.”
