"I've never seen anywhere with as many snowdrops as this village. There are crowds of them in the copses, massed chairs in the churchyard, pious vistas glimpsed through sparse winter hedges and congregations lining the margins of the carnser. ‘Spring will come,’ they whisper to me quietly as dull winter drags on and on. ‘Have faith.’"

A beautiful, gentle, necessary book, offering a desperate, heartening look into the natural world that we often miss because of our busy, insular modern lives.

Melissa Harrison's writing is subtle, skilful, and accessible, and her style is well-suited to audiobooks. (Of course, this will come as no surprise to anyone who's listened to her podcast of the same name, which was described by many as a "saviour" during lockdown.) I found her voice as cheerful and light as her prose, and I floated—trance-like and comforted—through six hours of her delightful, balmy musings.

Something I particularly appreciated about The Stubborn Light of Things was Harrison's adeptness at making the future seem so painfully hopeful. Throughout, she scatters little reminders of the harm we're doing to the wildlife around us—the passage about the birds she took pleasure in seeing yearly, like clockwork, suddenly finding themselves without a home because of uncaring developers enraged me—but she nearly always follows these moments up with stories of regular people and organisations trying desperately to enact positive change, and how they do occasional succeed, despite all the odds. They fight because they are inspired to believe in a better, cleaner, kinder world, and anyone can do it. All it takes is enough people to care about something that doesn't impact them immediately, but innocent creatures and ecosystems that can't advocate for themselves, and suddenly a little patch of the world is improved. I think it's such a lovely idea, and a powerful one, too.

A section that really stood out to me, one that I just can't stop thinking about days later, is when Harrison talks about those brief, all too common moments when we're out in nature and come across an animal, and instead of it going about its buisness as usual, it chooses instead to flee from us. How much must the sounds of panic cut our souls to pieces every time it happens? We've lost our ability to go back where we started, and we've almost been rejected by the world outside our brick and mortor dwellings. I sometimes think it's what has left us so lost, and callous, and broken up inside. It's also why we get so excited during those glorious, shining moments when these same beings choose to trust us—when a deer stops in its tracks to look at you not out of paralysing fear, but because it's curious; when a squirrel or bird takes food directly out of your hands and lingers; or when a baby duck trundles up to the edge of a pond and calls to you. It's like coming home, isn't it?

Overall, The Stubborn Light of Things has inspired me to take note of, and enjoy, the luminous and vulnerable world around me, but also to be angry that this isn't the world my great-grandparents, or even my parents, inherited. There are fewer insects, fewer birds, fewer trees—fewer everything, except pollution. And that's not okay, and I will not pretend that it's normal, just because it's easier. The natural world deserves better than the way the wealthy, powerful, and corrupt treat it, and we deserve better, too. I'm grateful, endlessly, that Harrison's reminded me of that fact, and helped me see it all a little bit clearer, too.