Rebecca Solnit, whose new essay collection, No Straight Road Takes You There, is a glimmering shard of hope amongst the enshittification of everything. The American author tackles subjects as diverse as the climate crisis, women’s rights, toxic masculinity, short termism and political populism with a light touch, blending a sharp eye for detail and sharper prose with a depth of knowledge about the past that lends perspective to our current travails.
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Solnit coherently makes a case for taking a long-term approach to all aspects of life and simply never giving up hope. She argues that the state of the world can feel like it’s unchangeable and has always been this way, but that new narratives are being created all the time to combat such negativity, taking society and the planet into hopefully a more positive future.
These are not personal essays per se, but the author brings a wealth of personal experience to the fore when examining her subjects, always giving her gigantic topics a down-to-earth and approachable feel.
All of this can be seen in the collection’s exemplary first essay, ‘A Truce With the Trees’, in which Solnit meditates on the history of a 300-year-old violin still being played today. Her thoughts take in everything from the art of playing music through the ages to the craft in making and preserving the instrument, the climate change and fossil fuel extraction that is threatening future violins and much more. It is beautiful and uplifting in equal measure, and displays Solnit’s masterly writing in microcosm.
No Straight Road Takes You There by Rebecca Solnit is out now (Granta, £16.99).You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.
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