Product Description

This is a story about a man who lives alone because he chooses to. In his cabin in the New England woods, he lives with his collection of old newspapers and carefully saved nails, his mule and his owl. His much loved cousin, Nan, is just close enough to him to visit now and then. The man who lives alone leads a solitary life: quiet and content.



In simple, lyrical prose, Donald Hall creates a moving and believable portrait of this affectionate, eccentric man, from childhood to old age. We understand why he is the way he is, the names and pictures of his days, and, finally, how those days will end. It's a story about self-sufficiency and about solitude, about the difference between loneliness and being alone, about living and about dying.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #680005 in Books
• Published on: 1998-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 33 pages

Customer Reviews

One of if not the most wonderful books I have ever read
I read this book as a fresh eyed 18 year old. I am now a 40 year old woman tattered but not shattered. This happens to be one of those books so rare to me, I feel the same way about it today as I did the first time I ever read it. I gave my copy to my sister an English Lit. teacher. She uses it every semester. Mr. Hall signed it for her. I now only have a photo copy of it and it breaks my heart that I don't have the book. God Bless Mr. Hall and his most magnificent literary ability.

Peace
I love four things about this book. First, this great contemporary poet wrote it. It also reminds me of Fisherman Simms, a book from my childhood featuring a similar character and pastoral setting. I love the simple but elegant black and white pen and ink illustrations.

I also love the story. The nameless man built a camp on Ragged Mountain and lived alone collecting things, thousands of rusty nails, deer pelts, old newspapers and clocks, and "wasps nests hanging from railroad spike." He built a shed for his mule, who does have a name--Old Beauty. He survived a terrible childhood, a house fire, and when he was 14 left home and tramped around until he returned home to visit his cousins, who made a few years of his youth happy. He liked eating vegetables because "that is what the woodchuck ate." He made friends with an owl named Grover Cleveland. He worked as a carpenter and could do everything else too.

Not much happens here. But this story offers an intense tranquility that others lack. In our harried age, children need this kind of peace. Alyssa A. Lappen