Hi! Here's a review. Read!
Disclaimer: I'll be honest. I'm not an English major and do not aspire to be one. I keep things quick and dirty and opinionated. And I'm seriously ADD when it comes to writing/anything. You've been warned.
"The Dirty Life" was the first book I cracked open in the pre-apocalyptic year 2011. My mom gave it to me after hearing the author Kristen Kimball promote it on the radio. You can hear her interview and read an excerpt or two on NPR's All Things Considered. Anyway, I worked on a farm once and a garden a few other times, so mom thought I'd like it. And I did! Sort of.
This book is 'Pride & Prejudice' set on a farm. Except the girl has more money than the boy, the boy is not a huge a$ most of the time, there thankfully is no Mrs. Bennett equivalent, and Pemberly is a massive run-down piece of land in upstate New York. But everything else is kind of the same. Sort of.
This book is a love story about a girl, a boy, and a farm. The girl (Kristin) falls in love with a boy (Mark) who is already in love with farming, but has enough love to go around for Kristin too. Kristin leaves her chic city life for mud and butchering and most importantly, love. Love for a man and love for the feeling of accomplishment she'd get at the end of a farm day. Often, she muses about important life things and how those life things parallel to farming --
"Question: Why is farming like a relationship?
Answer: Because you do not reap what you sow. That's a lie. You reap what you sow, hill, cultivate, fertilize, harvest, and store." p. 211
And so on. It's a sweet book, a love story with a happy-ish ending. It strips farming of all its modern eco-chic romanticizing, while making it a grand allegory for a relationship. And that's nice, I suppose. The sensual cooking scenes were pretty steamy, to say the least, and they made me hungry (but in a way that I ought to cook for my food). While not the most stirring piece of literature ever, I give it half a raised eyebrow for content and another half for readability. That's one fully raised eye-brow!
Word of the Day:
stentorian (adj) extremely loud
Note: The 'Word of the Day' is inspired by obscure words tested on the GRE and defined by
Merriam-Webster.com.
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