What a tender jewel of a book! I floated through it without resistance.
The author, Elisabeth Tova Bailey, is thoroughly disabled, bedridden, frightened. She has one of those autoimmune diseases that has no name, no cure, and little relief. A loving friend brings a gift one day. She has found a tiny snail in the woods, places it in a bed of violets, and puts it at Bailey’s bedside. Right away, how sweet.
Bailey has nothing else to do, so observes this living tableau. She finds a square hole in a violet leaf and thus begins her friendship with the snail. No book this reader has ever read benefits from such disciplined focus on such a tiny detail of life. Bedridden woman and snail. A love story.
Turns out snails are admirable. They are of more ancient heritage than humans. They can walk upside down and lift objects many times their own weight. They know what they should eat; this snail begins with eating envelopes and eventually graduates to more nourishing fare. They have sophisticated means of protecting themselves, including the ability to hibernate through hard times. They have lively sex lives, though they are hermaphrodites.
With even this partial list of snails’ virtues, this reader was led to ruminate on the humility recommended in Steven J. Gould’s book, The Mismeasure of Man. Can the human animal, who cannot fly, claim to be superior to a bird? If a human were given only envelopes to eat, she’d die. Some of us can barely lift our teacups. Our sexual habits often lead to chaos, and we can’t walk upside down, except for Fred Astaire, who dances upside-down in Royal Wedding.
The book is as sweetly written as poetry, as thoughtful as Montaigne, as endearing as Winnie the Pooh. It is alchemy, changing a person clinging to life into an angel of beauty.