NATURE AS WE KNOW IT
Kathleen Jamie illuminates the wilderness of doll heads, carcasses, bottles, caves, and scientists
I had noticed, more than noticed, the cobwebs, and the shoaling light, and the way the doctor listened, and the flecked tweed of her skirt, and the speckled bird, and the sickle-cell man’s slim feet. Isn’t that a kind of prayer? The care and maintenance of the web of our noticing, the paying heed?
-from FINDINGS
During her husband’s hospital stay for a life-threatening illness, Kathleen Jamie didn’t pray, but she did find herself paying very close attention to the world around her. In
Findings, she shares her direct, uncluttered observations of the natural and unnatural world—seen from her kitchen window, on the streets of Edinburgh, in hospital corridors, and in the Outer Hebrides.
What she finds: an awe-inspiring salmon run that turns out to have reengineered so that no salmon can possibly reach the top of the falls. A disembodied doll head, caught with the carcass of a whale in sea grass on a remote island, where crofters once combed for driftwood. She wonders: “is durability still a virtue, when we have invented plastic.”
Findings received resounding praise on publication in the U.K. John Berger named it his favorite book of 2005, “because it finds without disturbing the found. And this takes courage and delicacy” (
The Guardian).
