Friday, July 6, 2007 - Page updated at 02:01 AM
E-mail article
Print view Share:
Digg
Newsvine
Book Review
Author's essays in "Findings" find beauty in disorder
Special to The Seattle Times
Book review
"Findings: Essays on the Natural and Unnatural World"
by Kathleen Jamie
Graywolf, 148 pp., $14
Scottish writer Kathleen Jamie has a few axes to grind in this quietly lyrical book of homespun essays. First, there's our general attitude about darkness. "The natural, courteous dark was too much maligned," she writes in her opener, about visiting a Stone Age tomb in the Orkney Islands. "(T)he whole idea wanted refreshing."
Essay by essay, she plies this skeptical, open-minded stave into the world, studying texture that is taken for granted. She goes on whale cruises, tracks down rare birds and glimpses salmon fighting upstream to mate and then die.
There is a primordial power to all of Jamie's subjects: birth, life, death, and beauty. But she never lets this bully her into a posture of reverence. Why is the "natural" oddly superior to the "unnatural"? At what point do human activities cross from one realm to the other?
There are, of course, debatable answers to all these questions, but Jamie is not a writer in search of order. "Findings" is a book about existing in contradiction. The natural world has rhythms we mimic and others we subvert.
So in addition to essays on birds, the sky and the dark, this book also features meditations on the Georgian skyline of Edinburgh, with its clock towers and spires.
Jamie muses on the value of the Sabbath as a day of reflection. One need only look to these thoughtful, sometimes provocative essays to find a strong argument for the good that can emerge from it.
Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

Best Northwest Employers
Vote for your favorite Northwest employers in the 2008 NWjobs People's Picks contest. Vote now.
Updated at 8:18 AM
Winfrey dedicates show to her late dog
Sandler breaks ankle playing basketball
Simpson out of hospital, feeling better
Jury: Smith son died of drug overdose
O'Jays son dies after taken from jail
McCain, Letterman spar on 'late Show'
Ebert to resume writing movie reviews
- Revisiting McCain's Keating 5 history | Close-up
- Kennewick reservist faces threats over landscaping
- Boeing CEO in no hurry to settle strike
- Face the grim reality of the 2008 Seahawks | Steve Kelley
- The measure of Palin's inexperience: She's not ready for her close-up
- Dow closes below 10,000 amid global sell-off
- Countrywide suit settled; homeowners to get aid
- Obama's allies warn GOP: Lay off attacks
- Positions harden in Boeing strike; McNerney, unions spar over outsourcing
- UW's use of freshmen has some fans seeing red
- Revisiting McCain's Keating 5 history | Close-up
- Graduates drowning in debt from high cost of college
- Countrywide suit settled; homeowners to get aid
- Oregon Labrador headed to DockDogs National Championships
- Boeing CEO in no hurry to settle strike
- With no way out of trouble, more students likely to default
- King County home prices slide again, but more people are buying
- Seattle's first parish centered on traditional Latin Mass
- Positions harden in Boeing strike; McNerney, unions spar over outsourcing
- Drug companies: No cold medicines for kids under 4



