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Essays
by Laura Marris
In this debut essay collection, Laura Marris reframes environmental degradation by setting aside the conventional, catastrophic framework of the Anthropocene in favor of that of the Eremocene, the age of loneliness, marked by the dramatic thinning of wildlife populations and by isolation between and among species
She asks: how do we add to archives of ecological memory? How can we notice and document what's missing in the landscapes closest to us?
Filled with equal parts alienation and wonder, each essay immerses readers in a different strange landscape of the Eremocene. Among them are the Buffalo airport with its snowy owls and the purgatories of commuter flights, layovers, and long-distance relationships; a life-size model city built solely for self-driving cars; the coasts of New England and the ever-evolving relationship between humans and horseshoe crabs; and the Connecticut woods Marris revisits for the first time after her father's death, where she participates in the annual Christmas Bird Count and encounters presence and absence in turn.
Vivid, keenly observed, and driven by a lively and lyrical voice, The Age of Loneliness is a moving examination of the dangers of loneliness, the surprising histories of ecological loss, and the ways that community science―which relies on the embodied evidence of "ground truth"―can help us recognize, and maybe even recover, what we've learned to live without.
"Marris combines personal and natural history to potent effect, and the elegiac prose renders palpable the distance that modernity has placed between humans and the environment. Readers will be awed." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A satisfyingly complex and profound collection." ―Kirkus Reviews
"The Age of Loneliness is a gorgeous, poignant guide to finding one another in a time of loss."―Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts
"The Age of Loneliness is a stunning book that will become a close friend, and like all good friends, it will change the shape of our world. Both personal and planetary, roving in its intelligence and deeply rooted in its lyrical observation, Laura Marris has managed that trickiest of feats: she brings the past into the present and reminds us that we're not yet alone. With prose that calls to mind the best in the tradition of nature writing, but with a voice which is also clearly, distinctly its own, Marris is the writer for our time." ―Daegan Miller
"The Age of Loneliness calls to us from our era of extinction like a bird we thought we had lost. Laura Marris is a prophet whose patient song calls us to attention, to mercy, and finally, to each other." ―Tomás Q. Morín
This information about The Age of Loneliness was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Laura Marris is a writer and translator. She is a MacDowell fellow and the recipient of a Silvers Grant for Work in Progress. She teaches creative writing at the University at Buffalo.
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