Wild Snail Readalong, week 3

I’m making a couple of live appearances in London in March: Sunday Papers Live in Clerkenwell on 8th March, and One Track Minds on March 10th at Wilton’s Music Hall • The subscriber giveaway is back! Begin or renew an annual subscription in February, and you’ll be automatically entered into a prize draw to win a lovely box of snail-themed goodies, including a copy of our group read, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, a signed copy of Enchantment, some of my writing essentials (a refillable ink pen, a bottle of ink, a Rhodia notebook, Blackwing pencils), and some brand new Clearing stickers that are EXCELLENT and I might not want to let them go.

Hello!

I’m back from Sri Lanka and catching up with all your comments last week - I love how many people are undertaking a ‘snail’s pace’ read rather than rushing through. As an inveterate fast reader, I always find it hard not to whoosh through any given book, catching only the most pertinent bits (in my defence: I have to read a lot of books for my work. This week, there are six waiting for me before I even start reading the things I want to read). But Wild Snail Eating has a spaciousness that invites us to slow down. Only then, I think, do we get the bodily sense of the author’s enforced stillness, and the deep, narrow focus of her attention.

While I’ve been meandering through this book, a snail has taken residence in my study. I haven’t personally seen it yet, but every morning a fresh, silvery trail squiggles across my rug. I don’t know if this is the same snail that slimed all over Fraggle’s food each night at the end of last year; maybe my house just attracts snails somehow. But either way, as we reach Part III of the book, I’m beginning to see them in a different light. Snails, we learn, are unfathomably strong and capable of dazzling feats of self-healing. They also live in sensory landscapes that are hard for us to comprehend, guided by scent and touch, while living in total silence. What extraordinary creatures!