The Everybody Ensemble

August 2, 2021
In this eccentric essay collection, Pushcart Prize–winner Leach (Things That Are) defends the dignity of all organisms, giving voice to animals, plants, and microbes alike. At the work’s heart is her ideology of “everybodyism,” a version of universalism that includes “not just all the human rascals but also all the buffalo rascals and reptile rascals and paddlefish and turkeys and centipedes and wombats and warty pigs.” The essays are short and amusing, with Leach’s lighthearted humor and charming brand of absurdism on full display—in “Non Sequiturs,” she encourages resistance to dogmatism, writing, “Linnets have no tenets; any animal, in response to religious dogma, says, ‘That’s just religion talking.’ Dogness defies dogma.” “Sleepers Awake” celebrates divinity in the wonderful variety of stuff on Earth, while “Haunted by Hedgehogs” considers misinformation-filled medieval bestiaries. The strength of Leach’s prose is in her turns of phrases, which are plentiful and playful (“Gravity can be a good friend, but I have noticed that he plays favorites”). She meanders from one subject to the next, and though this can sometimes betray a lack of focus, her profoundly empathetic perspective keeps things grounded. There’s much to savor in this quirky mix of sharp writing and quick wit. Agent: Jin Auh, the Wylie Agency.

September 15, 2021
A collection of pieces about the lessons nature can teach us when we listen. Leach's short, pithy, humor-laden essays continue in the vein of the Whiting Award-winning author's first collection, Things That Are (2012). The opening, titular essay, set near the Zambezi River, announces an exuberant, Whitman-esque concert in which numerous animal songs are joyfully sung, and "everyone here is as contemporary as everyone else, and as temporary." Setting up her own take on a medieval bestiary, the author writes that she "learned how to imitate pinecones" from pangolins and "how to be happy alone" from pandas. The French naturalist Francois Leguat, who observed animals on an isolated island in the Indian Ocean in 1691, has her ruminating, "If only mystery could go into exile instead of going extinct." The author enjoys reading John Milton's anti-censorship pamphlet, Areopagitica, because it "tells the church to butt out" in a time when, "before a book was published, it had to first be approved by a bunch of interfering friars." In "Pedestrians," Leach recommends overcoming wishful passivity and beginning the process of learning (anything) right away. Barnacle goslings, for example, must learn that they have to fly from the "four-hundred-foot precipice where they are nested. Their parents cannot carry them down." When we call someone wild, we think "loud and crazy," but most wild animals are "reticent" and "wallflowers." Like many of us, Leach is concerned about the shrinking numbers of animals, and interesting flora and fauna, well-known and obscure--from Sicilian donkeys to elvers (baby eels) to sandhill cranes--travel throughout these pages. For Leach, it's "yes to the Earth, my Earth, for I do not hope to find a better where." Not every piece is a hit, but the misses are few, and many are good for sharing with children. The book is a good companion to Aimee Nezhukumatathil's World of Wonders (2020). Nice work from a wise, welcoming observer of the beauteous nature all around us.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.