Elisabeth Tova Bailey

As someone comforted by the presence of animals and wildness of every biological sort, including a great affection for slugs, and as someone with a chronic illness that leeches much of my energy, a book about a life-saving relationship with a snail 🐌 by a woman literally levelled by a pathogen 🦠 could only be of interest. The fact that my relationship with the small things just out my door has replaced earlier hikes and woodland walks almost entirely because of fatigue makes it all the easier to slip into the author's perspective and see as she sees, love as she loves.

But I don’t think you need to be ill to love this book. It is beautifully written, gently unfolding at the pace of its subject, the woodland snail that lives for a year beside the author’s bed. It is a meditation and an exploration, of relationship to doing, of relationship to self and illness and another creature barely aware of your existence. She explores the habits and biology of her snail friend in fascinating short chapters, while pondering the changes that not only her illness but the snail have brought to her life.

A beautiful book.… (meer)