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Mystery Is Not Despair

Notes from Hidden Spaces
By Will McGrath
0.0 (0 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Farewell Transmission by Will McGrath is a collection of essays that embark on a poignant and humorous exploration of hidden and unconventional lives. From Yemen to Lesotho to the Bronx, McGrath encounters a diverse cast—from diamond miners to professional wrestlers—uncovering mysterious and often overlooked stories. The book delves into secret histories and obscure passions, revealing the unseen connections that bind humanity across the globe.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book will appeal to readers interested in arts and culture, travel writing, and essays that explore human stories off the beaten path. Fans of Leslie Jamison and John Jeremiah Sullivan will appreciate McGrath’s evocative prose and empathetic storytelling.

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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

In Farewell Transmission, Will McGrath guides us on a rambling quest into the enlightenment of other lives. Funny and heartbreaking, intimate and galvanizing, these essays venture from Yemen to Lesotho to the Bronx and beyond. We find Caravaggio at an Arizona homeless shelter and meet Elvis in rural Canada. We encounter diamond miners and professional wrestlers, night watchmen and righteous ex-cons—those wilderness prophets too frequently cropped from the picture.

This is a book of hiddenness: of secret lives, ghost stories, and obscure passions. Whether he's unraveling the fraught history of a noose in Namibia or wandering the Driftless Area with a modern-day goatherd, McGrath is on an excavation into landscapes rarely seen. Like Leslie Jamison's The Empathy Exams and John Jeremiah Sullivan's Pulphead, these essays pulse with electric prose and vivid characters, seeking out the invisible forces that bind us across our wondrous and troubling planet.

Farewell Transmission is a book about paying attention: to the concealed lives we encounter every day, and to the hidden worlds that exist within our own.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Critics praise McGrath’s writing for its wit, warmth, and keen observation. Kirkus Reviews calls it "a warmly humane memoir" and a "chronicle of spiritual growth." The Minneapolis Star-Tribune describes McGrath as a "likable, curious guide," while Booklist highlights the blend of "insightful commentary and sympathetic comedy," making it an "illuminating and enjoyable read." Despite some stylistic messiness, Asymptote celebrates the book’s hopeful and joyful tone against despair.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781950539505

Publisher: Dzanc Books

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 27 October 2022

Country: United States

Imprint: Dzanc Books

Illustration: Illustrations

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Weight: 250g

Collections

Arts & Culture Biography & Memoir Non-Fiction Will McGrath

About the Author

Will McGrath has worked as a reporter, homeless shelter caseworker, public radio producer, UPS truck loader, Burger King mayo-applicator, ghostwriter, and ghosteditor, in slightly different order. He spent twenty months living in the southern African kingdom of Lesotho – the subject of his book, Everything Lost is Found Again (Dzanc Books 2017), which won the Disquiet Open Borders Book Prize in 2017.  He has written for The Atlantic, Pacific Standard, Foreign Affairs, Guernica, and Roads & Kingdoms, among other magazines and journals.  His writing has won nonfiction awards including the 2014 Felice Buckvar Prize and has been translated into Chinese, Hungarian, and Japanese.

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