Strangers Book Reviews

Strangers by Rebecca Tamás Book Summary

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE

In Strangers, Rebecca Tamás explores where the human and nonhuman meet, and why this delicate connection just might be the most important relationship of our times. From ‘On Watermelon’ to ‘On Grief’, Tamás’s essays are exhilarating to read in their radical and original exploration of the links between the environmental, the political, the folkloric and the historical. From thinking stones, to fairgrounds, from colliding planets to transformative cockroaches, Tamás’s lyrical perspective takes the reader on a journey between body, land and spirit—exploring a new ecological vision for our fractured, fragile world.

Rebecca Tamás’s poetry and criticism has been published widely. She is the co-editor of Spells: Occult Poetry for the 21st Century, with Sarah Shin, published by Ignota Books and her first poetry collection, WITCH was published by Penned in the Margins in 2019; to praise from the Poetry Book Society, the Guardian, Telegraph, Irish Times, TLS, White Review and The Paris Review. Rebecca is a lecturer in Creative Writing at York St John University, where she co-curates The York Centre for Writing Poetry Series. She is represented by Emma Paterson, at Aitken and Alexander.

‘​A fascinating, lyrical exploration of the eco-political, from human and non-human bodies to landscapes. Tamás’ essays are deeply rooted in folklore and the fragility of existence. A stunning work of enquiry and eloquence.’
—­­­ Sinéad Gleeson

‘So full of insight, compassion and reason’
– Anthony Anaxagorou

‘Rebecca Tamás creates a shifting perspective in her essays which illuminates while giving unexpected pleasure.’
– Amit Chaudhuri

‘Bursting with intellectual generosity. Deep wide roots and radical shoots. ’
—­­­ Max Porter

‘To read Rebecca Tamás is to feel weirdly, uncannily creaturely, and to see all around us as pulsing with meaning.’
—­­­ Katherine Angel

‘Strangers is a much-needed lesson in how to love—unconditionally and immeasurably—a dying world.’
—­­­ Jessica J. Lee

‘Erudite yet intimate, moving yet fierce, Rebecca Tamás’ hungry exploration of the world – occurring at the porous boundary between literary forms – made me rethink what it means to be humane.’
—­­­ Olivia Sudjic

’Rebecca Tamás writes searingly on loss, transformation, art and the body. Her writing is tender and sharp, brimming with heat’
—­­­ Nina Mingya Powles

‘Strangers is an extraordinary, essential book. Both quiet and loud. Strange yet explicit.’
—­­­ Sara Baume

‘exciting and clear-eyed’
—­­­ Melissa Harrison

‘These essays are sharp, purposeful, moving and strange: necessary writing for now.’
—­­­ Jenn Ashworth

‘The writing in these essays is luminous and urgent, intensely intimate and wildly global. Strangers is an intricate exploration of environmental precarity, literary strangeness, and the importance of the nonhuman.’
—­­­ Naomi Booth

‘Strangers is a work of generous, optimistic curiosity, one which forgoes the easy promise of a world to come and invites us instead into a relationship of charged “feral intimacy” with a world that is already here.’
—­­­ Sam Byers

‘Tamás builds a world so intimate for us here, teaching us how to unlearn and relearn, relive and relove.’
– Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal

‘This text is an echoing, unstoppable bell.’
– Caught by the River (book of the month)

‘A passionate and poetic exercise in empathy for everything.’
– Between Two Books

‘a beautiful exploration of our relationship with nature’
– Idler’

‘intriguing and generous’

– New Statesman

‘The essays appear not as fragments but as portals, dropping deep into the currents of contemporary ecological thought and lived experience…’
– Amy Clarkson, SPAM

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