The Faraway Nearby

By: Rebecca Solnit

Narrated by: Rebecca Solnit

This personal, lyrical narrative about storytelling and empathy from award winner Rebecca Solnit is a fitting companion to her beloved A Field Guide for Getting Lost.

In this exquisitely written new audiobook by the author of A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit explores the ways we make our lives out of stories, and how we are connected by empathy, by narrative, by imagination. In the course of unpacking some of her own stories - of her mother and her decline from memory loss, of a trip to Iceland, of an illness - Solnit revisits fairytales and entertains other stories: about arctic explorers, Che Guevara among the leper colonies, and Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein, about warmth and coldness, pain and kindness, decay and transformation, making art and making self. Woven together, these stories create a map which charts the boundaries and territories of storytelling, reframing who each of us is and how we might tell our story.

©2013 Rebecca Solnit (P)2014 Audible Inc.

A beautiful collection of thoughts

The author does a seamless job weaving these various narrations together. There are stories about aging, death, revolution, religion, just to name a few, and they are brought together beautifully.

moments of brilliance, passages of depth

But struggled to stay with it and finish, which I did. Apricots will always have more meaning now .... as my mother ages.

My favorite writer/poet/prose artist!

Would you consider the audio edition of The Faraway Nearby to be better than the print version?

I love hearing this woman's lilting voice as she reads her own written words.

Who was your favorite character and why?

The entire book is beautiful, emotional, insightful, lovely.

What does Rebecca Solnit bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Her voice. The depth of emotion comes through as her truth, which is an additional dimension to the story. Lovely and visionary.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yep. Twice

Any additional comments?

This woman is amazing. Highly intellectual, yet more than anything, insightful and spiritual. Thank you, Rebecca.

Beautiful memoir mixed with myth, reporting and more

Philosophical, lyrical, deep and wise!
Good for women with difficult mothers, travelers and writers. This book is crafted with care and read by the author which adds to your intimate sense of her.

Essential

To the very raw core of meanings. Essential to understanding Rebecca. Rich and variegated, superb and haunting. Thank you!

beautiful Solnit, as always

excellent book about the untouchable ideas that mean the most to us. rebecca solnit is a f&$king genius.

As near perfection as is achievable

A beautiful intricate clockwork of a book, in which one gear turns another and another and they somehow come back to the first and are all turning and working together, driven by the spring of the authors perception and imagination. And, thankfully, performed by the author - no other could have done it justice.

So much is here

Lighting a part of the depths so gently. This book is incredible, and I hope to return often.

Brilliant and bold and poetic!

A beautiful meditation on the ways that our storied experiences inform our imagination towards socially constructed narratives, the empathetic spaces we cultivate or sever within ourselves, both personally and communally, expanding or diminishing our identities and capacities for loss and meaning...

“If the boundaries of the self are defined by what we feel, then those who cannot feel even for themselves shrink within their own boundaries, while those who feel for others are enlarged, and those who feel compassion for all beings must be boundless. They are not separate, not alone, not lonely, not vulnerable in the same way as those of us stranded in the islands of ourselves, but they are vulnerable in other ways. Still, that sense of the dangers in feeling for others is so compelling that many withdraw, and develop elaborate stories to justify withdrawal, and then forget that they have shrunk. Most of us do, in one way or another.” - Rebecca Solnit

Great Book - Author shouldn't read it

Would you listen to The Faraway Nearby again? Why?

I'd love to, but I don't think I cold listen to the author reading it again.

What other book might you compare The Faraway Nearby to and why?

It's a unique story

What didn’t you like about Rebecca Solnit’s performance?

The author could benefit from working with a vocal coach. The intonation of her voice is monotonous and she speaks through her nose and mouth, so the voice was muddy, nasally, and drone-like. It sounded like she had a cold. All G's were pronounced hard - as in 'talking' became 'talkink'. So many words in the English language end in 'g' - this vocal quirk became distracting and ultimately annoying (or as would be read, "distractink" and "addoyink". I almost stopped listening when she clearly struggled to pronounce the word "numbing".

For such a brilliantly written book, it was surprising and extremely disappointing to listen the the stuffy, noisy and flat reading of of this immensely creative book. What was especially surprising was that these issues could have been remedied with vocal coaching, which should have occurred upon the first trial readings!