A solid collection of essays on the writing life, Daschunds, grief, and sadness. I have read anything by this author before but this is good writing.

(The publisher sent me this book along with a book I won from a LibraryThing Giveaway). ( )

Very detailed and interesting review of essays. ( )

I found this book of fifteen essays really slow paced. I also had trouble understanding some of the essays. Maybe it was just too over my head. I really tried to finish this but I couldn't get through it.

Fifteen essays make up this uneven collection. I found them all difficult to read for various reasons. I wasn't impressed with her Room in London, it was just blah.

Time and Biology: On the Threshold of the Sacred was so full of literary name dropping that I never figured out what Pritchard herself was trying to say. I don't mean name dropping in the gossipy sense that she claimed to personally know these writers, but, rather there so many brief quotes that I was annoyed that the essay was written show how well read she is. Sixteen pages of that.

Doxology is thirty boring pages about her dog. Her grief of her parent's deaths, the title essay, rates only twenty pages--much of it about the cost and procedure of cremation. There were also brief, lightweight pieces on Walt Whitman and Georgia O'Keeffe. There are other short pieces that aren't especially memorable.

Finding Ashton, about a US female soldier in Afghanistan, was moving but there was too much about Melissa Pritchard and not enough about Ashton Goodman.

"Still God Helps You": Memories of a Sudanese Child Slave is the most powerful essay in the collection. It is a well written piece of social journalism. Here Pritchard lets Manyuol tell his story with a minimum of insertion of Pritchard's feelings and beliefs. This was the sort of writing I had hoped for when I requested the book, I wish there had been more like it. ( )

As a fan of Pritchard's writing I was excited for the chance to read this essay collection. And it didn't disappoint! The best part of this book is that it didn't feel like you were reading a collection of disconnected essays- more like you were having an afternoon chat with a friend. Highly recommended!