18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A dream., October 17, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: A New Kind of Country (Mass Market Paperback)
This book could have been written for me. I am green with envy. The peace of living alone in a beautiful, but challenging setting.....I want that, and until I can have exactly that, great books like this one with have to suffice!
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"What if I had waited for someone to do this with, and never done it at all?", May 7, 2009
says Dorothy Gilman, of her decision to move to Nova Scotia in the seventies and establish a solitary, productive, joyful life in a farmhouse far removed from the comforts of suburbia.
And I would never had read this book, had I not gotten hooked on Gilman's series of mysteries and fallen completely in love with her heroine Emily Pollifax. Emily is that rarest of individuals, a person with a gift for normal living who has imagination and a sense of adventure. She has always been a little "different" and after her husband's death, she decides to fulfill a dream and apply to be a spy for the CIA. The rest is history. After reading these delightful books, one wonders if Dorothy is like Emily, and if so, how?
Well, yes and no. Dorothy as a child covered the walls of her room with maps, and Emily visits many of the countries featured on those maps. Dorothy's marriage ended in divorce and Emily remarries, quite happily, to Cyrus, who is from the beginning one of her best friends and who supports her risky adventures with understanding and appreciation. Emily knows karate but Dorothy succeeds in wresting a productive garden out of the Nova Scotia soil on which she settles after her divorce. More importantly, Dorothy learns to lead a joyful solitary life - and it is the wisdom we see in this brief autobiography that shines through her Mrs. Pollifax books. So in the deepest sense, yes, they are much alike.
This book could be medicine for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the onslaught of trivial entertainment and activity which comprises the life of urban and suburban people today. It could also be inspiring to anyone who would like to be inspired to a more self-sufficient lifestyle and move to a rural area to establish a homestead. But most of all, it will inspire you to look within yourself honestly and learn from what you find there.
Dorothy writes: "What did I learn? I learned to fashion a day out of nothing at all and to give it shape and balance. I learned how to make a blueberry pie, to be very quiet and watch birds circling and tomatoes ripening. I learned how to work hard physically, to sickle grass, haul earth, dig holes and trenches, fight slugs, and cultivate a garden. I made new friends, and one of them was myself...I learned this, too: that we are each, inside of us, a country with our own mountains and plateaus and chasms and storms and seas of tranquility but like a Third World country we remain largely unexplored, and sometimes even impoverished, for want of a little investment."
I am lucky that my library still has its copy of this book, but there are plenty of used copies available. Make the investment and read it!
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21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
More like 3 1/2 stars, May 20, 2000
This review is from: A New Kind of Country (Mass Market Paperback)
This is the author's account of her time spent re-inventing and re-discovering herself in Nova Scotia. It was intriguing to learn about this writer in such a fresh, unpretentious examination of her life's journey. I had to skim over the occasional dip into new-age hokum, but this book is an inspiration for all women to take stock of just who they are and who they'd like to be.
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