Published: 2019
No of Pages: 234
RRP: 26.95
Dimensions: 128x198 mm
ISBN Print: 978-0-6482026-4-6
ISBN E-Pub: 978-0-6482027-9-0
ISBN PDF: 978-0-6482027-8-3
The Grass Library
by
The Grass Library is a philosophical and poetic journey that recounts the author’s relationship with his four sheep and other animals in his home in the Blue Mountains. It is both a memoir and an elegy for animal rights.
“The Grass Library is one of the most beautifully written books about animals I have ever read. I know of nothing else like it published in this or any other country. It is deep, sensitive, charming, instructive and above all, humble. I cannot imagine anyone reading it without coming away in some profound sense altered. ”
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, once a psychoanalyst and Director of the Freud Archives, is the author of numerous New York Times best-selling books.
Reviews & Interviews
“The Grass Library is a gorgeous book. Anyone who loves animals will be enchanted… but it’s a book that will challenge your thinking as well.” Click here to read more. ANZ LitLovers LitBlog – Lisa Hill 21 June 2019.
Giving Animals a Voice – click here to read an interview with David Brooks in the Blue Mountains Review – 14 August 2019
Click here to listen to David Brooks discuss The Grass Library on LibSyn.
Click here to listed to David Brooks discuss The Grass Library on Poetry Says
Scott Stephens, Editor of the ABC Religion and Ethics Program and co-host of ABC RN Minefield described it thus: “The book is breath-taking. A literary and morally compelling demonstration of what communion with non-human animals looks like, and in a manner that exposes the paucity and imaginative impoverishment of the usual ‘animal rights’ rhetoric.”
“This may not be a book for everyone’s taste but for those of us who love ‘non-human animals’, as the author calls them, and believe deeply in animal rights, then you will be entranced and deeply moved by this beautiful memoir.” Good Reading Magazine
“If you want a book to give to a dear friend, don’t look any further than The Grass Library by David Brooks, except that once you hold the book in your hands you’ll probably want to keep it. When I saw the cover and read the first page, I was hooked” – The Gleaner, November 2019 – click here to read more.
“I ADORED THIS BOOK, a touching, searching, and also very funny report on the ad-hoc sanctuary that Brooks and his partner—a scholar of nonhuman-animal grief, T.—put together when called on to give refuge to a ram, Henry, and a wether, Jonathan.” A. Marie Houser, Faunary Press, September 2019 – click here to read more.
“On the surface, The Grass Library tells a simple story. In the Blue Mountains, he begins to establish a sanctuary for wayward animals, most notably their dog Charlie and four sheep: Henry, Charlie, Orpheus, and Pumpkin. But in true essayist style, Brooks tells the reader they’re in for more than what’s on the narrative surface—“this book isn’t about veganism, or guilt,” he writes, “but ultimately and more simply it’s about discovery and wonder: wonder, and wondering.” Jack Stanton, Mascara Literary Review, September 2019 – click here to read more.
Learning to Listen to Charlie – by David Brooks – Opinion ABC Religion and Ethics – click here to read
“The Grass Library quietly challenges the way we think about non-human beings …” SMH Spectrum 5-6 October 2019 – click here to read more.
Click here to Listen to an interview with David Brooks on Our Hen House (interview with David starts at 38.30)
Click here to listen to David Brooks read from The Grass Library – Writings Western Sydney.
“Brooks’ pervasive sense of wonder is important in that it honours animals’ other-ness. He never loses sight of the fact that animals have ‘minds of their own’. At heart, The Grass Library is a story about a man allowing himself to be guided. By animals, certainly, but also by writing…” Adele Dumont in Plumwood Mountain, Vol 7, No 2. – click here to read more.
About the Author
David Brooks is a poet, novelist, short fiction writer and essayist. He has taught literature at various Australian universities and is Honorary Associate Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney. A vegan and animal rights advocate, he lives in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, and spends a portion of each year in a village on the coast of Slovenia. He has been called ‘one of the quiet masters of Australian poetry’, and ‘one of Australia’s most skilled, unusual and versatile writers’ (Sydney Morning Herald). Pangea, a major Italian literary website, recently described him as ‘the most eccentric writer in Oceania’. His works have been widely shortlisted for major Australian literary awards. He was the 2015/16 Australia Council Fellow in Fiction, in recognition of his extensive contribution to Australian and International literature. His work has been widely translated and anthologised. He has been a guest-of-honour at international conferences and literary festivals.
Click here to read full CV.
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