Rhona

Picks

• "Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection" by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (Pantheon Books, New York, 1999)
  A primatologist presents what we know about maternal behavior in humans and other primates, drawing on biological research, ethnographic studies, and the historical record. Very interesting discussions of conflicting interests between men and women in reproduction, of maternal ambivalence, and of the links between maternal love and sexual love. Some provocative ideas about how the adoption of settled agriculture was bad for women. Feminist and intellectually honest.
• "The Hearing Trumpet" by Leonora Carrington (Exact Change, Boston, 1996)
  Leonora Carrington was an early twentieth-century British painter and writer who settled in Mexico. Many of her friends were Surrealists. This book is surreal in flavor: full of strange incidents and whimsy. The plot is engaging: the search for the Holy Grail, to reunite the Goddess with her Pneuma, to save the Earth and humanity. No stuffiness or New Age pontification at all, though. Much lighter and wildly imaginative. The Exact Change publishing company in Boston has restored to print lots of twentieth-century experimental books. What wonderful people!