The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
By: Elisabeth Tova Bailey / Narrated By: Renee Raudman
Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
The beauty of life in The Microcosm
I have no idea what I was thinking when I initially rated this audiobook a mere 3.5-Stars over on Audible a few years ago. I mean, I’d just finished a book that irked me about a woman with ALS, and I’d made comparisons, finding this book, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, to be more touching and less… irksome. I don’t like being irked. So I'd rated this book higher, but really? After listening to it a second time, I was struck by the quiet beauty of this little gem of a memoir.
Elisabeth Tova Bailey was once vibrant, active, had a grand circle of friends, but after a trip to Europe, she comes back to the States with a mysterious and unutterably debilitating illness that makes it absolute hell to move. She’s limited to life on a sofa where she at times exhausts herself in trying to do exciting things like… roll over on her side. Things change, however, when one of the friends who visits her brings her a snail. At first Tova Bailey is bemused: Why not just leave the little creature where it was? What’s she supposed to do with a snail? How on earth is she to care for it when she can’t care for herself?
But as the snail begins showing its personality and its druthers, she’s found she’s absolutely smitten. She begins studying works from naturalists, biologists, writers, and poets, and she begins learning so very much about her tiny woodland companion.
I s’pose that’s what sank my initial rating earlier, and I s’pose that’s what keeps it from being a full-on 5-star review here: She kinda goes crazy with the science side when she conveys to us all she’s learned. Truly, it’s a sad, sad day when one comes to realize that snail sex is boring. >Yawn< But what saves it are all the truly wonderful quotes about snails that poets have made throughout time. Lovely, absolutely lovely!
Also adding to the pleasure is Renee Raudman’s warm narration. Her voice conveys somberness and fatigue without coming off as muted and dull-witted; it is earnest without being urgent and melodramatic. It’s the voice of someone I’d love talking snails with. When she describes her observations of the snail tending to its eggs, Raudman breathes life and excitement into the narrative, and we get to feel the wonder that this woman, BECAUSE she’s been struck down and her world has become so small, is in a grand position to be quite possibly the only person who’s witnessed such an act. So Brava, Ms. Raudman!
Okay, so maybe this isn’t a perfect listen, at least not for someone who’s more into the lyrical parts than the scientific ones, but it gets darned close. We come to understand that so very much in life is small, usually beneath our notice. But if we slow down and open ourselves to really look?
Ahhh, what beauty there is all around us!
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