Timeline

• Jul 29, 2025: started reading.
• Aug 05, 2025: finished reading.

Review

A really sublime debut. Solà is the type of writer who makes other writers seethe with jealousy. Her story here is lyrical, surreal, mythic. It’s somehow minutely detailed yet almost universal.

Her versatility with narrative voice is the real star. This book has an entire chapter written in from the perspective of an entire network of fungal growth in the mountains! It has the perspective of the mountains themselves as they’re violently birthed, as they bear witness to and resent the feckless humans that build homes on them, and as they are slowly worn down by time. None of these choices should work. In any other context they would be too outlandish, too gimmicky, borderline absurd. And yet they all somehow still work to drive the narrative forward. To help you understand how deeply interconnected the people and the land are, and to drive home the tragedy and redemption at the heart of the novel.

Really a special book. A pleasure to have read it.