Helen Humphreys

Helen Humphreys is one of my favourite authors. She can spin a phrase that makes you weep with the glory of it, can break your heart in a sentence, change your mood in a paragraph.
The reinvention of love is a book filled with such moments. We are taken to the France of Victor Hugo, cholera, revolutions, and Napoleon, to witness a literary competition wrapped in a love affair.
Every character is carefully explored, every moment enhanced. The story itself, centred around Charles Sainte-Beuve, pulls you along through the tides of history, stopping here and here for a dip into one literary salon or another.
It all makes me wish that I could have lived in Paris back then, smelly sewers and intrigue and all. What a magical time that was!
Let Humphreys take you for an exploration of this time and the depth of human love.… (mais)

What an absolutely beautiful book! It doesn't really come as a surprise to me because Helen Humphreys' writing has always been superb. But in this book it is more than the writing that makes one catch one's breath. The illustrations, the pictures, the structure and the cover are all superb.

Humphreys lives (at least part-time) on the eponymous river. It is actually called Depot Creek where she lives but it is part of a whole tributary system called the Napanee River. Humphreys has swum and canoed and kayaked and walked the river for years and knows it in all its seasons and attributes. She details the geological history and the geographical history and the human history. She has catalogued its flora and fauna. There are fictional stories and there are stories about people who lived on the river. Accompanying it all are photographs by Tama Baldwin made, I believe, purposely for this book.

This will be a book that I will keep for a long time.… (mais)