Hummingbirds Between the Pages
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- £16.99
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- £16.99
Publisher Description
In his latest collection, Hummingbirds Between the Pages, prizewinning Irish essayist Chris Arthur muses on subjects ranging from Charles Darwin’s killing of a South American fox to the carnal music sounding in a statue of the Buddha, from how Egyptian seashells contain echoes of World War II to a child’s first encounter with death. Whether he’s looking at skipping stones, old photographs, butterflies, the resonance of a remembered phrase, or being questioned at an army checkpoint during Northern Ireland’s Troubles, what gives these unorthodox meditations their appeal is the way in which—with striking lyricism—they tap into unexpected seams of meaning and mystery in our everyday terrain. Arthur explores the moments that have left him spellbound, tying his own experiences as a young boy from Ulster who saw his first hummingbirds in London to the wonder felt by early settlers to America who sent pressed hummingbirds across the ocean to the communities they had left behind. Through rumination on the seemingly quotidian, Arthur’s lyrical prose exposes new layers of possibility just beneath the surface of the expected.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In these reflections on memory, mortality, and history, Irish essayist Arthur (Reading Life) exhibits a well-trained "magpie-eye" for the telling fact or detail that seems trivial but contains a greater significance. Such is the case with the tendency of early Scotch-Irish immigrants to America to press hummingbirds, an unfamiliar species to them, between the pages of a book and send these mementos home. To Arthur, this is a metaphor for his own process of trying to capture the ineffable in textual form. Elsewhere, Arthur fixes on the moment on December 6, 1834, when Charles Darwin, visiting San Pedro Island off the coast of Chile, killed a species of fox seldom seen there. Observing the odds against the famous naturalist and the rare species crossing paths at that very spot, he reflects that "any moment offers a portal into the tapestry of time and chance and consequence." Still another essay discusses discovering his father's pocket watch, recalling memories that made "the temporal ground beneath my feet... suddenly gave way" and send him "plummeting back three quarters of a century." Arthur is a gifted observer, and these finely crafted essays will surprise and delight.
