#daisy hildyard

[carpentrix]

Fathers, sons, flight—as far as fathers go, no one would rank Daedalus as World’s #1 Dad. Why didn’t he and his son Icarus make their famous flight at night? Moonlight won’t melt wax. But I think Daedalus knew exactly what he was doing. Had they flown by moonlight, we wouldn’t have learned of the consequences of ambition unmatched by ability. And Brueghel would not have painted the shepherds and farmers not seeing Icarus splash into the sea, and Auden would not have written “how everything turns away / quite leisurely from the disaster.”

The Harvest Moon rises tonight and “The Moon in Full” series continues at the Paris Review.

[draculasdaughter]

[Lila] makes the reader feel her horror in her pungent experience of other humans. She compares human bodies with inert objects and animals, and describes her disgust at this perception. These bodies are too physical to be bearable. How poorly made we are, how insufficient. To see the body as physical is to notice its inbuilt mortality.

— Daisy Hildyard, The Second Body, 2017.

[renefitzgeraldgreen]

a talent for peaceful enjoyment which she spread around her house and garden

p12

Hildyard, Daisy. Emergency: A Pastoral Novel. Astra House, 2022.

[renefitzgeraldgreen]

These resources, like my quarry, are sited not only where they will be cheap, but also where they will be largely unseen by human eyes.

p11

Hildyard, Daisy. Emergency: A Pastoral Novel. Astra House, 2022.

[renefitzgeraldgreen]

I like to think that I would go mad if I tuned into everything, all the time

p11

Hildyard, Daisy. Emergency: A Pastoral Novel. Astra House, 2022.

[renefitzgeraldgreen]

Among the children it was understood that she had been pulling up face when the wind changed.

It was one of those miniature persecutions that children rehearse, with an instinct for victimizing difference

p8

...

I like the secret realities which exist only among children in early childhood. Like the songs passed down from one generation of children to the next without the parents ever interceding. Or in this case, the children's-true story of why Alice the witch's face was like that.

Hildyard, Daisy. Emergency: A Pastoral Novel. Astra House, 2022.

[renefitzgeraldgreen]

It was a thing I'd read about in a library book and the story flowed into my reality and my real life leaked back into the story.

p7

Hildyard, Daisy. Emergency: A Pastoral Novel. Astra House, 2022.

[renefitzgeraldgreen]

This image was vivid to me in a way that made it unimportant as to whether I had dreamed or remembered it.

p7

Hildyard, Daisy. Emergency: A Pastoral Novel. Astra House, 2022.