Grove: A Field Novel, by Esther Kinsky

I started Grove toward the end of July. I read it for a week, set it aside for a week, read it for a week, set it aside for a week, and thought I would read it for another week before finishing, but in fact the last section took me just two days. My slow progress and long breaks should not be seen as criticisms: I loved this book. But it reads very slowly, and it wasn't the sort of book I could sit down and read for a long stretch. I also, as I mentioned in a previous post, found myself writing a lot while I was reading this book. I'm not much of a poetry person, but more than once I've read interviews with authors who say that poetry is what they read when they are in the midst of writing something. For me, I think this book served the same purpose. (And Esther Kinsky is, in fact, a poet as well.) The book is very much about the language it consists of and the images it evokes. I don't know if that makes any sense. 

Grove is divided into three parts, which cover several trips to Italy taken by the narrator. The first and third part are solo trips in some rough present, in the wake of the death of a partner, about whom you learn little. Both are winter trips to out of the way places, or places reserved for summer vacations. In the middle section, the narrator recalls what seems to have been frequent childhood trips to Italy with her family. Her father, repelled by eels, and fascinated by the Etruscans, Byzantine mosaics, and Fra Angelico, brings his family to Italy to follow his passions. 

The subtitle "A Field Novel" is not totally clear in its meaning, but much of the book is centered on observations of the natural world in the villages the narrator visits, particularly birds and trees. Eels make unexpectedly frequent appearances in this book. There are observations on the built world as well, particularly in its run down state. All of these observations seem to be filters for the narrator processing her loss, of her partner and of her father before that. Another recurring theme is places of the living and places of the dead. The narrator visits many, many cemeteries, but the places of the living she visits aren't very inhabited by the living either. 

I could say much more, but I won't. This book is gorgeous.