The Electricity of Every Living Thing
A Woman’s Walk In The Wild To Find Her Way Home
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4.2 • 10 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The New York Times bestselling author of Wintering writes a life-affirming exploration of wild landscapes, what it means to be different and, above all, how we can all learn to make peace with our own unquiet minds . . .
In anticipation of her 38th birthday, Katherine May set out to walk the 630-mile South West Coast Path. She wanted time alone, in nature, to understand why she had stopped coping with everyday life; why motherhood had been so overwhelming and isolating; and why the world felt full of expectations she couldn't meet. She was also reeling from a chance encounter with a voice on the radio that sparked her realisation that she might be autistic.
And so begins a trek along the ruggedly beautiful but difficult path by the sea that takes readers through the alternatingly frustrating, funny, and enlightening experience of re-awakening to the world around us…
The Electricity of Every Living Thing sees Katherine come to terms with that diagnosis leading her to re-evaluate her life so far — with a much kinder, more forgiving eye. We bear witness to a new understanding that finally allows her to be different rather than simply awkward, arrogant or unfeeling. The physical and psychological journeys of this joyous and inspiring book become inextricably entwined, and as Katherine finds her way across the untameable coast, we learn alongside her how to find our way back to our own true selves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this powerfully descriptive work, a grueling hike becomes a metaphor for a woman's experience with Asperger's syndrome. At 38, May (Wintering) sets off on foot along England's 630-mile-long South West Coast Path, "a difficult, craggy and bloody-minded walking route." May's motivation: "something about the feeling that I am probably now halfway through my life; that time is running out; that it's now or never." She does the hike in stages, sometimes alone, other times with friends, and almost always with her husband, "H," and her three-and-a-half-year-old son, Bert, meeting her for dinner. May's vivid snippets of "mental suffering," domestic struggles, conflicts at school and work—all heart-wrenching testimony to her and her family's strength—are interwoven with descriptions of the trail as she seeks in nature the solace she needs to deal with the world. Her writing is sharp as she navigates the "self-flagellating zig-zagging" of the trail and her life: "I am a testament to the confabulatory powers of the human brain. I have made a whole, gleaming, normal person out of jagged shards of a broken one." Candid, rough, and uplifting, this moving account shines.
