Elisabeth’s adventure with snails begins when a friend brings her one nestled in a pot of wild violets and sets it on her bedside table. Elisabeth had always been an active person, one who enjoyed the outdoors around her country home in Maine. While on a trip to the Alps, she comes down with a mysterious viral illness that leaves her bed ridden for many years. At times, it was impossible for her to even read in bed.
Hold up before you think this sounds like a depressing book. It’s not at all. Elisabeth’s illness is just the reason why she has all this time to observe the snail and later its friend and over time a very many baby snails, too.
In a style reminiscent of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea, Elisabeth details the fascinating world of snails as Lindbergh showed us the beauty of shells as she reflected on her place in the world.
In the opening of her book, Elisabeth cites a quote from Edward O. Wilson, which sums up the spirit of her book:
“The natural world is the refuge of the spirit . . . richer even than human imagination.”
The natural did become the only thing that Elisabeth could keep pace with–the pace of a snail–and soon she was able to learn many things about snails through reading in addition to what she learned through observation. One fact that I cannot forget is that snails have over 2,600 teeth and can regenerate them as they dull. I should add that I did not act on the impulse to go out and get a terrarium in hopes of finding my own snail in the nearby woods. This idea is still in the back of my mind, however.
I read this 178-page book over the course of an afternoon. Through her stories embedded with many facts about snail life, the reader escapes into a world we would otherwise never know as we go through life at our often hectic pace.
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The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, August 2010
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