Animal Bodies

  ‘'A raven lands on the branch of a Jeffrey pine. Its feathers and beak, inky as a night without stars. I tried to take a photograph, but the dog barks it away.
                                          The Red-Tailed Hawk 
Very soon it is my birthday, and I go out onto the deck to straighten up the patio furniture for a party. A hawk circles above, soaring with its wings at a slight dihedral. It's October, I tell myself, autumn: the season of the hawk.'' 
A poignant memoir of loss - ‘'death'' is in the end of life, ‘'death'' is in the end of a relationship - teenage dreams, familial bonds, womanhood, and dreams. In essays that take us from Lake Tahoe to Spain, Southeastern Asia, and South America, Roberts talks to us as if to dear friend, through confessions communicated with directness, honesty and immediacy. Although I don't usually read memoirs with similar themes, I can certainly say that this one made me think. Despite the fact that I couldn't connect with the sexual and marital issues that play a central role in the essays, her musings on Death and the end of childhood struck a chord with me.
I leave you with two of my favourite extracts:
‘'Someone was playing bagpipes, and it has just started to rain. Spanish moss hangs in green shawls from the oak trees above our heads, and the resurrection ferns come back to life, remembering elasticity and shape. A crow calls from the rain-drenched sky. I craned my neck to see it in the elbow over a branch.''
‘'I am home, looking out the window, and it's raining again. The pine and fir trees shift in the wind. A silvery mist hides the lake and sky. The raven is back, croaks from a branch. I rise from a chair, walk through the window. Raindrops chart rivers down the glass. 
Another raven answers the call, then shoots through the wind and lands on the lower bough, the branches of a naked aspen are white, like bones. The dog sleeps by the fire.
It's nearly Christmas, and I think about the lighted angel we placed at the top of our tree when I was a child and how I always made sure the other angels hung from nearby branches below. That way, I told my mother, they are close enough so when they talk to her, the angel above will still be able to hear her friends. 
The rain turns finally to snow.''
Many thanks to Rosemary Sikora and the University of Nebraska Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.