This book of thought-provoking essays queries the nature of place, asking landscapes to reveal their meanings. Suzannah Lessard begins in Rensselaerville, a remote village not far from Albany, New York, that you reach by descending a forested ridge into an intimate valley. The first sign of town is an elegant 19th-century church spire poking through the treetops; it’s like entering Brigadoon. Her elegant prose unveils contradictions behind the beauty, where neglect and abandonment lap at the edges of the carefully tended historic village.
Lessard, author of The Architect of Desire (on Stanford White’s tragic story), tries to set aside her own predilections (against suburbia, for example), which she admits is something of a fool’s errand, as she develops themes that include authenticity and its corporate exploitation and our fascination with the ruined and discarded.
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