Review of The Peregrine by J.A. Baker
No other way to put it: This book is a treasure of the English language.
In The Peregrine J.A. Baker describes how he tracked and trekked over months and miles in his native England to watch and record in language like you've never read how peregrines hunt and feed and fly and play and rest. The language he uses to construct his sentences is like none other I have ever read. It's a vivid mix of nature writing and the best poetry. The text is so dense, the sentences are so packed with words bringing life to action--there really is no reading experience I can compare this to. I could only stand to read a few pages at a time; "relish" not "read" would be the better word there.
This is more than "nature writing," too. Baker gets under the very surface of life to expose what lurks. Just a few excepts to illustrate:
"The hardest thing of all to see is what is really there."
"Terror seeks out the odd, and the sick, and the lost."
“There is no mysterious essence we can call a 'place'. Place is change. It is motion killed by the mind, and preserved in the amber of memory.”
“Whatever is destroyed, the act of destruction does not vary much. Beauty is vapour from the pit of death.”
I cannot give The Peregrine anything less than 5 stars. It's more than a book, it is a reading experience. Reading it will expand your senses. It will enliven you and enrich you as a human being. I think that's the greatest thing we can expect from any book.
In The Peregrine J.A. Baker describes how he tracked and trekked over months and miles in his native England to watch and record in language like you've never read how peregrines hunt and feed and fly and play and rest. The language he uses to construct his sentences is like none other I have ever read. It's a vivid mix of nature writing and the best poetry. The text is so dense, the sentences are so packed with words bringing life to action--there really is no reading experience I can compare this to. I could only stand to read a few pages at a time; "relish" not "read" would be the better word there.
This is more than "nature writing," too. Baker gets under the very surface of life to expose what lurks. Just a few excepts to illustrate:
"The hardest thing of all to see is what is really there."
"Terror seeks out the odd, and the sick, and the lost."
“There is no mysterious essence we can call a 'place'. Place is change. It is motion killed by the mind, and preserved in the amber of memory.”
“Whatever is destroyed, the act of destruction does not vary much. Beauty is vapour from the pit of death.”
I cannot give The Peregrine anything less than 5 stars. It's more than a book, it is a reading experience. Reading it will expand your senses. It will enliven you and enrich you as a human being. I think that's the greatest thing we can expect from any book.
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