Lisa B. reviewed on 5/16/2006 + 37 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

The Outermost House, a chronicle of a solitary year spent on a Cape Cod beach, has long been recognized as a classic of American nature writing. Henry Beston had originally planned to spend just two weeks in his seaside home, but was so possessed by the mysterious beauty of his surroundings that he found he "could not go," and spent his time writing in longhand on his kitchen table.
The Outermost House is one of the most indispensable nature books we have in our literature, and in it we find the wonders of life itself; the migrations of seabirds, the rhythms of the tide, the windblown dunes, and the scatter of stars in the changing summer sky. "The world today," Beston writes, "is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot." Vivid, cosmic, universal, and hauting, The Outermost House captures humanity's relationship to nature in a way only our finest books can.

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