A review by blueberryhotel
The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New by Annie Dillard

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

5.0

i’ve been meaning to read annie dillard for so long and i’m so glad i finally did. this feels like the perfect place to start too. everyone was sharing her essay about a (different) total eclipse earlier this year around the eclipse, and now that i’ve read it i definitely see why. dillard’s hard to categorize — she’s so much more than a “nature writer”. she accomplishes that elusive, deceptively difficult task of connecting seemingly innocuous and transient moments with the grander human experience, the things we all share, and manages to do so without veering into preachy (even in an essay explicitly referencing catholicism!) i love when i read a book’s forward by a different author lauding the author i’m about to read and it gets me excited to start; the forward here definitely did that for me and describes dillard’s writing more comprehensively and illustratively than i can.