Lambsquarters: Scenes from a Handmade Life

Subtitled "Scenes from a Handmade Life," Barbara McLean's back-to-the-land memoir Lambsquarters is constructed of numerous short sections, many of which are meditations on familiar country things: a leaning barn, a crowbar, a snapping turtle, a towering beech tree, a corduroy road. But the book comes fully alive when the author recounts her many experiences raising sheep on their southern Ontario farm, named appropriately after a local edible weed. The tales of delivering, raising, shearing, and caring for sheep and lambs have the scent of authenticity--the reader can smell wet wool and lanolin in the air of the old barn. McLean is good with a simile: a lamb born dead is "neatly contained in a pellucid envelope, as beautifully wrapped as a Japanese present"; half-grown chicks are watched by barn cats "following their moves like tennis fans." The broader considerations of life in the country are all present (weather, wildlife, social gatherings, and so on), but this book excels in its homey, almost invisible details, as in the way moisture quickly evaporates from a freshly laid egg. At times the book feels somewhat overwritten, with too many references to the gods and goddesses of classical myth, and McLean fails to make the few characters outside her own family come alive. Nevertheless, for its quiet reflections on country ways, this is a most enjoyable read. --Mark Frutkin

Author: Barbara McLean

Publisher: Random House Canada

Year: 2002