-
“Deep Time and Dark Spaces: Robert Macfarlane’s Underland” by S.N. Kirby
Under the earth is a world far stranger and far more mystical than our humdrum life here up top. Robert Macfarlane’s latest book, detailing these mysterious underground places, serves as part field guide and magic handbook for us surface dwellers. Underland weaves together a narrative of not just the earth and its underworld, but of the history, the present, and the future of mankind. This is not a book for the claustrophobic.
From the start, Macfarlane directly says that this was a book he intended to be less about humans and more about the mysteries below the earth;
-
“The Fragility of Health and Friendship in Rheea Mukherjee’s The Body Myth” by Emily Behnke
Mira, a widowed teacher living alone in a bustling modern city in India, witnesses a beautiful woman having a seizure in a park and rushes to help. Soon after, she develops an intense and volatile friendship with the woman, Sara, who suffers from a variety of symptoms and ailments with no conclusive diagnosis, and her husband Rahil, who acts as her primary caretaker. As the trio endures the ebb and flow of Sara’s physical and mental health, Mira’s own emotional stability wobbles, ultimately causing each friend to evaluate Mira’s role within Sara and Rahil’s marriage.
Rheea Mukherjee writes with fluidity and lyricism,
