We specialize in hard to find items
(1)
Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile: A Novel
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
- Cash On Delivery/Cash Upon Pickup Available
About Timothy; Or, Notes Of An Abject Reptile: A Novel
Product Description Few writers have attempted to explore the natural history of a particular animal by adopting the animal’s own sensibility. But Verlyn Klinkenborg has done just that in Timothy: an insightful and utterly engaging story of the world’s most famous tortoise, whose real life was observed by the eighteenth-century English curate and naturalist Gilbert White. For thirteen years, Timothy lived in White’s garden. Here Klinkenborg gives the tortoise an unforgettable voice and keen powers of observation on both human and natural affairs. Wry and wise, unexpectedly moving and enchanting at every–careful–turn, Timothy surprises and delights. Review “Charming and most enjoyable.” –The New York Times“Marvelously entertaining. . . . [Klinkenborg] affirm[s] nature, simply by giving it a voice. In the din of our times, that may be one voice worth listening to.” –The Boston Globe“Klinkenborg is neither naturalist nor nature poet, but he writes about nature with the science of the former and the soul of the latter.” –Los Angeles Times “Magical. . . . Timothy comes down off the shelf of the Natural History Museum and comes alive, delivering . . . the most satisfying meditation on life and the natural world since Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead.” –Chicago Tribune About the Author Verlyn Klinkenborg is the author of Making Hay, The Rural Life, and The Last Fine Time. A member of the editorial board of The New York Times, Klinkenborghas been published in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Mother Jones, and The New York Times Magazine, among other publications. He lives in upstate New York. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. I was gone for more than a week before they found me. A rustling in the bean-field, heavy steps nearby. A shout--the boy's voice--more shouts. Thomas catches me up in his hands with sickening haste. I weigh six pounds thirteen ounces. He lifts me as though I weigh nothing at all. Ground breaks away. May wind shivers in my ears. My legs churn the sky on their own. I look down on bean-tops. Down on the blunt ends of sheep-bitten grasses. Over one field, into the next, into the hop-garden beyond. Past thatch and tiles, past maypole, past gilded cock on the church tower. All in my eye, all at once. So far to see. Goody Hammond and Daniel Wheeler's boy totter forward beside Thomas. Great warm two-legged beasts. Stilt-gaited like the rest of their kind. The boy prances backward, eyeing me closely. Bland watery orbs, fringed with pale hair. Cavernous mouth. Halloos as though I were the king's stag being drawn through the village in a deer-cart. My week gone in two-score of their strides. Through the meadow. Past the alcove and down the brick-walk. Wicket-gate clicks shut behind us. Thomas sets me down beside the asparagus. Edge of my umbrageous forest. All feet square on the ground again. Into the rubbery trunks. Young asparagus thrusting out of the earth like turtles' heads. Ferns just joining in a canopy above. Print of Thomas's warm fingers on my tiled belly, smell of tar and damp mould. The voices separate and blow away. The boy's cries ring down the street with cries of other boys. A silence behind them, a hollow in the day. Earthworms breach and tunnel, tunnel and breach. Old Hercules in the Great Mead gestures as always, unmoving. Wooden features sadly weathered even since I first knew him. Goody Hammond sweeps white-apple blossoms from the grass-plot. Sings a scrap of song over and over as she works. Wheezing like the blacksmith's bellows across the way. "O Christ! My very Heart doth bleed with Sorrow for thy Sake . . ." Greenfinch rattles in the beds nearby, heedless of danger. Mayfly vanishes in the blur of a swallow's wings over the gravel walk. Swallow-bill closes, a smart snap, shutting of a watch-case. The fuss the humans made when they found me. Escape of the Old Sussex Tortoise! Eight Days' Pursuit! Captured in Hamps
