Customer Reviews

You, Me, and the Insects

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You, Me, and the Insects is a heartening, bittersweet story of a spiritual struggle and transformation, told in parallel universes of mother, writer, wife in secular USA and dedicated struggling western yogini in luminously detailed India. The writing is marvelously rich, layered, the narrative is compelling. The phenomenal world is the source of terrific insight, delight and surprise. This is not a pretentious New Age memoir but an ageless picaresque and imaginative voyage. A major accomplishment for this extremely salient, charged writer.-ANNE WALDMAN

This is a miracle of a book. Barbara Henning has taken seemingly unpromising materials-the demanding study of yoga in southern India; the daily incidents of life there; the recollection of starting a family with a husband now dead-and transformed them into a narrative that is gripping, entertaining, and intensely moving. It is a triumph of imagination restoring irresistible vivacity to the perishable treasures of memory.-HARRY MATHEWS

Barbara Henning's astonishing new semi-autobiographical novel, You, Me and the Insects, is set in Detroit's Cass Corridor, New York and finally in Mysore, India, some 20-odd years later. While in India, Henning's narrator, Gina grows spiritually, developing a profound relationship with her guru while discussing yogic traditions manifested in India and the United States, as well as the history of Hindu mythology and sacred Vedic texts. But one of the few clear philosophical directives he gives her-"It is your duty to be joyful"-illuminates the foundation of their work together, and informs Henning's project as a whole: Discipline is an undeniable component in a spiritual quest, but creative force is equally vital. Enlightenment is not for the passive. In You, Me, and the Insects, Henning has written a testament to living and devotion-LYNN CRAWFORD (Review, Metro Times, Detroit, July 6-12, 2005).