Description
Description
A novel as wise as it is tender, a meditation on the miracle of friendship and the heartbreak of change, Followed by the Lark inhabits the life of Henry David Thoreau.
Composed in small scenes, Followed by the Lark is a novel of meditations--on loss, on change, on the danger and healing that come from communion with the natural world. Henry David Thoreau's connection to nature was tied to his feelings of grief; before he was twenty-seven years old and went to live at Walden Pond, two of those closest to him had died--his older brother, John, and his friend Charles Wheeler. Nature provided solace for these losses, but the world was changing around him. The forests were being destroyed by the logging industry. Wildlife was increasingly slaughtered for profit and sport. The railroad clanged through his quiet hometown. And the catastrophes of the American Civil War were beginning to stir just as his own life was coming to an end. Haunting in its quiet spaces, in the way it imagines the missed connections in his relationships, Followed by the Lark is uncommon in its combination of scope and brevity, in its communion with its subject while still maintaining critical distance. Thoreau's life in the early nineteenth century seems firmly in the past, but his time bears striking similarities to ours. As she explores these intersections in Followed by the Lark, Helen Humphreys elegantly, insistently illustrates how Thoreau's concerns are still, vitally, our own.
About the Author
About the Author
Helen Humphreys is an acclaimed, award-winning author of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her work includes the novels The Evening Chorus, Coventry, and Afterimage, and the nonfiction books And a Dog Called Fig, The Ghost Orchard, and The Frozen Thames. She has won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Toronto Book Award, and a Lambda Literary Award, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, the Trillium Book Award, and CBC Radio's Canada Reads.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"Poetic . . . Evocative."
--Alida Becker, The New York Times Book Review
--Janet Somerville, Toronto Sun "Uniquely lyrical, empathic, and transporting . . . Humphreys gracefully and perceptively imagines the inner life of a singular earth ecstatic more comfortable with bluebirds than humans, attuned to the seasons and the lay of the land, and blissful in solitude and communion with the page. A mesmerizing and moving homage."
--Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review) "Those already familiar with Thoreau's life; fans of Robin Wall Kimmerer or Mary Oliver; and anyone who agrees with Thoreau that 'wondering didn't always need an answer' will all appreciate Followed by the Lark."
--Shelf Awareness (starred review) "Humphreys is a born storyteller, her prose jumping through the life and times of Thoreau, like a gentle river current in summertime. The result is a novel of astonishing insight into Thoreau's complicated spiritual, and often tragic life."
--Ron Halvorson, EcoLit Books "Arresting in [its] beauty . . . Humphreys ably demonstrates the enduring appeal of her subject."
--Publishers Weekly "[An] affectionate meander through the life of Henry David Thoreau . . . whose enthusiasts will find much to delight here."
--Kirkus Reviews "What a balm, this book, the way it returns us to the nouns of the world: the birds, the stones, the stumps, an apple in the pocket, a brother, a pond. It made me want to go outside. By inhabiting Thoreau, letting us walk with him through the Concord woods, Followed by the Lark shows the natural world offering order against the messy stuff of human life--its disappointments, confusions, periods of lockjawed grief. With muscle and melancholy, it reminds us that a sense of meaning rises from a sense of place, and that attention is a form of reverence, and love."
--Nina MacLaughlin, author of Wake, Siren "This Thoreau is flawed, human, muddling through, and yet also prescient about the consequences of empire and what some called progress. Followed by the Lark is a beautiful threnody for what is lost as we grow and what is destroyed by colonization."
--Sarah Moss, author of The Fell "Followed by the Lark unfolds like friendship itself: the initial surprise, delightful as the first bluebird of spring, followed by the long years and sneakily brief seasons of mutual discoveries, tensions, and shared losses. Helen Humphreys has written a textured, intimate companion to our factual knowledge of Thoreau and, in the meantime, evoked a longing in this reader for a deeper connection to the natural world. A gem of a book."
--Christopher Castellani, author of Leading Men "Helen Humphreys has given us a Thoreau tenderly, mindfully observed in moments to be experienced much as the good surveyor of Concord did himself: with a sauntering curiosity that brings life into our hearts, bearing all its freshness, all its depths and contradictions. I will treasure this book."
--Trevor Herriot, author of The Economy of Sparrows
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub date:
2024-02-13
Length:
240 pages
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