Death of a Hornet and Other Cape Cod Essays

Ann Lloyd Merriman

Robert Finch has few peers as a nature writer… Finch has the rare ability to peer intently at something and discover nuances and shadows others never see.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

A master of the gentle art of observation.

Scott Russell Sanders

Robert Finch dwells in his beloved Cape Cod as perceptively and devotedly as any American writer dwells anywhere. Reading these meticulous, rangy, and wise meditations is like tramping cross country with the most observant of companions, one who offers up fresh discoveries with every sentence, every step.

Library Journal

Finch, the author of several books (Common Ground and The Cape Itself among them) and winner of Boston Public Library's New England Literary Lights Award in 1999, has once again written a quietly moving collection of essays about Cape Cod, based on his experiences living there year round. His keen observations of the natural environment also include reflections about human nature, ranging from the general ("Defense in insects, as with us, seems to be founded not on the ability to survive but on the resolution to keep from forgiving as long as possible") to the personal, as in an essay on his desire to buy a house in town. He is a first-rate observer in his ability to go beyond describing the wonders of life on the seashore to make the reader feel as if she or he is actually there. He also succeeds in his desire to bring about a better awareness of how our actions are affecting the land on which we live. Recommended for public and academic libraries where there is an interest in nature writing and/or New England.--Kelley Gove, Kennebunk Free Lib., ME Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Booknews

These essays are divided into two sections, eponymously named for two of Finch's Cape Cod hometowns, Wellfleet and Brewster. Subjects range from contemplating the moment when a cubist landscape is transformed into a sudden unity, to attending the burial of a neighbor, to assisting in a whale rescue, to tracking down the psychedelic array of the Cape's wild mushrooms. Finch, a well-known nature essayist and co-editor of , is a careful observer but tends toward all-knowingness, as in the title essay where he describes a spider who has subdued a hornet: "The spider remains crouched motionless behind its mummified prey, in that waiting game that spiders have perfected, where memory and hope play no part." No index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Ann Lloyd Merriman

obert Finch has few peers as a nature writer. . . . Finch has the rare ability to peer intently at something and discover the intricacies of a wren and of a whale with equal verve. He is an environmentalist in the true sense of the word, quietly recording his observations for others less perceptive to share.Richmond Times Dispatch

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

A first-rate nature writer [of] compassionate, quietly provocative essays.
—New York Times

Los Angeles Times Book Review

Robert Finch is a master of the gentle art of observation.

Time

A reflective observer whose verbal catalogs are reminiscent of Isak Dinesen.

Kirkus Reviews

Lyrical essays on place from a longtime resident of the Massachusetts shore. Finch, coeditor of the Norton Book of Nature Writing, has the nature-essay form down cold. He observes some quotidian fact of life, elaborates on it for a few pages, and closes with a sententious moral. So it is with the title essay, in which Finch describes the assassination of a yellow hornet by a spider that had hidden itself carefully away in a corner of its study; the spider, he writes, "was almost solicitous, as if ministering to the stricken hornet, as carefully and as kindly as possible ending its struggles and its agony." The moral Finch draws is this: "There is only the stillness of an eternal present and the silent architecture of perfectly strung possibilities." Finch repeats the formula in 43 other short pieces, all crafted at magazine-filler or radio-spot length: here he considers the behavior of migratory whales (the former mainstay of the Cape Cod economy), there he writes of ancient trees, wily fish, and passing birds. Unlike some practitioners of the nature-essay form, Finch even finds room in nature for humans (albeit in a wary, Robert Frost-ish way). For humans, he observes, are as responsible as the winds and tides for shaping places like Cape Cod, manifesting themselves in "a well-ploughed field, a well-tended garden, colorful flower-boxes, planted trees, drained bogs and swamps, and barn full of hay and a woodshed full of stove logs." Finch is meditative and celebratory, and he almost always avoids the genre's traps—chief among them sentimentality and self-indulgence. Readers familiar with Cape Cod will deepen their view of the place byfollowingFinch's pages; those who do not know it will likely want to have a look for themselves.