katarinabee's review
5.0
This collection of essays from Fiona Wright was so wonderful. It explores ideas related to home, the body, illness, and the ordinary events and routine that make up everyday life. The essays include stories from her life, but also reference ideas from a wide variety of writers, including academics, essayists, and poets.
One of my favourite essays was 'A Regular Choreography', which looks at how familiar routines and habits form part of your sense of 'home'. It celebrates the ordinary rhythms of life, in a world where seeking novelty is so highly valued. "... our modern, global world has developed a 'vocabulary of anti-home', which privileges restlessness over rootedness, the transcendent over the immanent, and it means that we are conditioned to see standing still only as stasis, a kind of living death. But standing still, or moving in repeated tiny orbits - this is how we connect with, and cope with, the much more ordinary existence that really is the stuff of so much of our lives; unspectacularly, perhaps, but beautifully, gently, and in a continual and immanent present."
Another favourite was "A Gravity Problem", where she looks at illness and disability - how we conceptualise what these mean, and also what it means to live with chronic illness.
Overall, I loved this collection - highly recommend it!
One of my favourite essays was 'A Regular Choreography', which looks at how familiar routines and habits form part of your sense of 'home'. It celebrates the ordinary rhythms of life, in a world where seeking novelty is so highly valued. "... our modern, global world has developed a 'vocabulary of anti-home', which privileges restlessness over rootedness, the transcendent over the immanent, and it means that we are conditioned to see standing still only as stasis, a kind of living death. But standing still, or moving in repeated tiny orbits - this is how we connect with, and cope with, the much more ordinary existence that really is the stuff of so much of our lives; unspectacularly, perhaps, but beautifully, gently, and in a continual and immanent present."
Another favourite was "A Gravity Problem", where she looks at illness and disability - how we conceptualise what these mean, and also what it means to live with chronic illness.
Overall, I loved this collection - highly recommend it!
elginmarbles's review
5.0
Had the pleasure of reading this whilst having Fiona as our guest lecturer for three weeks! A truly great collection of essays.
elena_lowana's review
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Fiona Wright's writing is not talked about enough. I love the way she writes about illness; it's rare to get writing that can move beyond standard illness cliches and pin down those complex movements of the body.
kaydee's review against another edition
5.0
Fiona Wright is such a gifted and insightful essayist and The World Was Whole has filled the gaps that her first collection, Small Acts of Disappearance, left for me. This is more externalised, a study of places and spaces and how we fit into them, in both physical and figurative ways. But it also still focuses strongly on her illness and how that influences the way she exists in the world.
I inhabit the same part of Sydney as Wright so there was a lot that was relatable here but even when she’s writing about, say, Shanghai, or Iceland, the breadth of her talent imbues such a sense of familiarity and, I don’t want to say comfort but I feel like it’s something akin to comfort, in her words.
I want to pass this on to as many of my friends as possible because it has reminded me that even in the frustration and freneticism of Sydney life there is still something very real to be found here. Also, the writing kicks arse.
I inhabit the same part of Sydney as Wright so there was a lot that was relatable here but even when she’s writing about, say, Shanghai, or Iceland, the breadth of her talent imbues such a sense of familiarity and, I don’t want to say comfort but I feel like it’s something akin to comfort, in her words.
I want to pass this on to as many of my friends as possible because it has reminded me that even in the frustration and freneticism of Sydney life there is still something very real to be found here. Also, the writing kicks arse.
bookspluscaffeine's review against another edition
5.0
Utterly breathtaking and honest. It was as if many of these essays put into words a feeling or thought or concept I hadn't realised I needed to be articulated until I read the words on the page.
lolabrigita's review against another edition
5.0
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this memoir, to the point where I COULDN’T finish it in one sitting. I had to have a few breaks while reading, give myself time to reflect and think about each essay before I could come back and continue on with the next.
Wright writes about a vast array of topics - mental health, chronic illness, the woes and frustrations of the Sydney rental market, travel and dog ownership/companionship, to name a few. Her delicate prose is alternatively funny and moving. Her musings about food and the way we unthinkingly treat people with eating disorders left me with much to mull over and mentally munch upon, particularly having friends with food allergies who often have similarly frustrating stories to tell.
I particularly enjoyed her essays on life in Newtown, Sydney. Having spent a few years living in the suburb, it was nice to trace well-known paths, walk down the road of King Street with her, through an area of Sydney that each time I visit, I find to be both familiar and alien, all at once. Such is the transience of big cities, I suppose. Through Wright’s words, it somehow felt like the home it once was and will never physically be again.
Wright writes about a vast array of topics - mental health, chronic illness, the woes and frustrations of the Sydney rental market, travel and dog ownership/companionship, to name a few. Her delicate prose is alternatively funny and moving. Her musings about food and the way we unthinkingly treat people with eating disorders left me with much to mull over and mentally munch upon, particularly having friends with food allergies who often have similarly frustrating stories to tell.
I particularly enjoyed her essays on life in Newtown, Sydney. Having spent a few years living in the suburb, it was nice to trace well-known paths, walk down the road of King Street with her, through an area of Sydney that each time I visit, I find to be both familiar and alien, all at once. Such is the transience of big cities, I suppose. Through Wright’s words, it somehow felt like the home it once was and will never physically be again.
bookedandborrowed's review against another edition
2.0
I wanted to like The World Was Whole and I really thought I would, but I struggled with the form: particularly the first few essays didn’t feel distinct from each other, rather that they were chapters of the same story - but then the theme shifted and we heard some of the same events from a different perspective, so it didn’t feel like a traditional memoir either. The relentless gloom got me down.