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BOOKS I READ: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey (2010). Bedridden with a debilitating illness, Bailey writes about an unusual bedside gift she receives from a friend—“the sort of friend who stopped for a snail.” For weeks, then months, from her prone position, she observes the life of this one gastropod, its locomotion over the slime it produces, its ravenous eating habits, the eggs that it lays, and, eventually, the spawning of the next generation.
Bailey juxtaposes her situation, shut in in a space bounded by the cocoon that are the four walls of her room, with the snail’s shell, a perfect logarithmic spiral. In one of my favorite passages, Bailey instructs that the “Mandarin Chinese words for ‘humble abode,’ which are wō jū, literally meaning ‘snail’s house.’”
Bailey inspired by the snail’s resilience, finds comfort through her observations of her tiny companion, somehow deciphers the wobble of the snail’s four independent tentacles.
See my Bookshop.org stand, supporting local bookstores, and my reading log. The previous book in the log is below:
