Death of a Hornet: And Other Cape Cod Essays [Hardcover]

Robert Finch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2000

Spanning more than twenty years, these essays record changes not only in the natural environment of Cape Cod, but in the writer's own life.. Death of a Hornet is one man's elegant rendering of Cape Cod, a sandy, scrub-oaked, tough, and vulnerable spit of land reaching out into the Atlantic Ocean. Here are stories of "natural adventures" that readers of Finch's previous books have come to expect, as well as longer meditations on the future of the Cape's fragile environment, the experience of living in one place for a long time and having to leave it, and the limitations of human sympathy.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Cape Cod, Massachusetts, like every other place, is but a small corner of the planet. Yet it contains multitudes, as the nature writer and editor Robert Finch demonstrates in this lively set of essays. In the title piece, which opens the book, he muses on a fellow occupant of his study, a spider that, one day, does in a yellow hornet that has incautiously wandered into her web. There is no cruelty in the spider's act, Finch notes, only a quiet affirmation of the unsentimental ways of nature, in which death follows and even presupposes life. Other essays consider the unhappy fortunes of a beached whale, one that evidently had not found enough to eat at a crucial stage in its growth; the comings and goings of migratory birds and bats; the movement of sand dunes; the falling of autumn leaves; and the eternal power of the ocean. In limning the landscapes of Cape Cod, shaped by humans as much as by the sea, Finch shows that one need not wander into the wilderness to find nature in abundance; his gentle reflections on the small details of daily life are models of compression and careful observation.

Although some of the essays are tinged with melancholy--as befits any consideration of matters of life and death, and of the passage of the years--they collectively celebrate a place that has captured the hearts of many, and will long do so. Or, as Finch writes, "How lucky are we who live in proximity to such a landscape, that has such easy powers to lift us out of our narrow lives and self-made blinders, and so seduce us into seeing who we really are!" --Gregory McNamee

From Library Journal

Finch, the author of several books (Common Ground and The Cape Itself among them) and winner of Boston Public Library's New England Literary Lights Award in 1999, has once again written a quietly moving collection of essays about Cape Cod, based on his experiences living there year round. His keen observations of the natural environment also include reflections about human nature, ranging from the general ("Defense in insects, as with us, seems to be founded not on the ability to survive but on the resolution to keep from forgiving as long as possible") to the personal, as in an essay on his desire to buy a house in town. He is a first-rate observer in his ability to go beyond describing the wonders of life on the seashore to make the reader feel as if she or he is actually there. He also succeeds in his desire to bring about a better awareness of how our actions are affecting the land on which we live. Recommended for public and academic libraries where there is an interest in nature writing and/or New England.DKelley Gove, Kennebunk Free Lib., ME
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint Press; 1ST edition (May 2, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582430497
• ISBN-13: 978-1582430492
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,912,265 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful essays of everyday nature, May 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Death of a Hornet: And Other Cape Cod Essays (Hardcover)

This is Robert Finch's finest work yet. His rich, visual observations of everyday nature enlighten and entertain us--- from the tiniest observation of a spider's web to the adventure of saving beached whales off the seashore. Each piece shows the how nature can connect to our often busy, technical lives and how we can not and should not ever try to break that connection.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes you can feel the sting, November 23, 2008

By 

Howie (North by Northwest) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Death of a Hornet: and Other Cape Cod Essays (Paperback)

Another fine book by Robert Finch, in the tradition of Common Ground, The Primal Place and Outlands. Unlike the other books by the same author, although the setting of most of the essays in this book is in the familiar Cape Cod and they are undoubtedly of the same nature essay genre, this book has a tinge of nostalgia because of the change in the author's personal life. Some essays are the purest "nature writings", but some, especially the concluding pieces in both sections of the book, "A Town Ghost", "Sometime I Live in Town", have very strong personal reflections and feelings attached.

Mr. Finch has never been an opinionated writer; he has always been and will always be an observer. He is usually not critical of humans' altering of the landscape; in fact, he has always said that places like Cape Cod are landscapes in motion. Natural history is not something that stands apart from human history. It must then take a lot for a very tolerant person like Mr. Finch to express his disappointment, appalling and sometimes anger at our species' assault to the environment. In "A Missionary Among Moonjellies" he records how unsupervised children senselessly mutilate and kill jellyfishes for no other reason than "fun"; in "Nothing But Net" he tells us about his encounter with a loon horrifically entangled in discarded, non-biodegradable, gill netting; in "The Once and Future Cape" he recounts and laments the places that he wrote about but which are lost to "development" and "progress".

What is, then, our relationship to the land? What is the future of places like Cape Cod? More than his other books, this one evokes the reader to ponder such questions.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Direct, touching essays, July 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Death of a Hornet: And Other Cape Cod Essays (Hardcover)

Robert Finch's words not only portray the flora and fauna and geography of Cape Cod, he shows the reader what the Cape really is. Those of us who've only visited during the season and thought we "knew" the place should be ashamed. Mr. Finch is a part of the Cape, and the Cape is a part of him, and this reader can only stare in wonder at the majesty and beauty of the world he describes.