Reviews

Living in the World as if It Were Home

Jill Boettger

The first time I sat down to read Tim Lilburn’s book Living in the World as if It Were Home (Cormorant), I went to it with the kind of mind and feeling that I take to my favourite shelf of music at Megatunes or my Grandma’s cheese and Hovis bread sandwiches: open, anticipatory. The second time, I went in with a very big dictionary. If you can already wrangle words like haecceitas, apokatastasis, acesis and eikastic, then you are further along than me. If not, be patient—the quality of Lilburn’s thinking will repay you. This book identifies both a problem (that we don’t treat the world as home) and a solution (that we need to), and in six sumptuous and finely tuned essays, Lilburn examines the human desire to make peace with the natural world. At times I think his contemplations offer true insight into this desire, and I’m changed by the writing. And at other times I think all he needed was the title.

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Jill Boettger

Jill Boettger writes poetry and nonfiction from her home in Calgary, where she lives with her husband and two kids. She teaches in the Department of English, Languages and Cultures at Mount Royal University and is a frequent contributor to Geist.

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