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The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey: book review



 

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating (2011) is set in Maine in America. 

 

This is a memoir of sorts. The author begins in spring when she is 34 years old and sick with a long bed-ridden illness, a mysterious viral or bacterial pathogen infection. A friend walking in the park saw a snail, picked it up and brought it, in a pot of violets, to the author’s bedside. This begins the author’s fascination with the snail.

 

She wonders why she has overlooked such a small but impressive animal before. What does she know about molluscs? Not much, but she is about to find out. It begins eating her ‘get well’ letters and cards, so she thought it needed real food and set about keeping her little snail alive.

 

Each morning, the author would check to see where the snail was in her room, where it ventured to, how far, and why. How did it make decisions about where to go? Was it looking for something or was it just wandering? She began jotting down her notes about her cohabitation with the snail – living in the same room, seeing the same things, having the same visitors. 

 

She was impressed that it ate an entire slice of Portobello mushroom each week, leaving its tiny teeth marks in it. The snail was even more interesting, and possibly more intelligent, than her regular visitor, her dog Brandy, a mix of golden retriever and yellow Labrador. ‘It was its tentacles … that gave my snail its look of intelligence and purpose.’ 

 

Snail-watching helped to pass the time, and passing time helped to heal her. She envied its abilities. The power of nature, the power of taking an interest, a curiosity, in something other than self can lead the mind to resilience, stillness, and calm. The author begins to notice life beyond her own breath, and an appreciation that she alive and healing, as slowly as the snail.

 

This is a short, delightful, snail’s trail of a book – following the roamings of a single snail for distraction until distraction becomes a study in molluscan life cycles. It is informative and engaging, in a slow way. 

 

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).


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