FROM THE PUBLISHER

Few writers have attempted to explore the natural history of a particular animal by adopting the animal's own sensibility. But Verlyn Klinkenborg, with his deeply empathetic relation to the world around him, has done just that, and done it brilliantly, in Timothy.

This is the story of a tortoise whose real life was observed by the eighteenth-century English curate Gilbert White, author of The Natural History of Selborne. For thirteen years, Timothy lived in White's garden, making an occasional appearance in his journals. Now Klinkenborg gives the tortoise an unforgettable voice and powers of observation as keen as those of any bipedal naturalist. The happy result: Timothy regales us with an account of a gracefully paced (no unseemly hurry!) eight-day adventure outside the gate ("How do I escape from that nimble-tongued, fleet-footed race? . . . Walk through the holes in their attention") and entertains us with shrewd observations about the curious habits and habitations of humanity. "To humans," Timothy says with doleful understanding, "in and out are matters of life and death. Not to me. Warm earth waits just beneath me. . . . The humans' own heat keeps them from sensing it."

Wry and wise, unexpectedly moving, and enchanting at every, careful, turn, Timothy will surprise and delight readers of all ages.

FROM THE CRITICS

James Sallis - The Washington Post

With Timothy, he has written an extraordinary book that, like all good art, rescues us from dailyness -- from, as Timothy would say, our terrible speed -- and makes our world again large and wondrous, a book that swings from funny to wise to sad often in a single sentence or phrase and puts profoundly into question humanity's apostasy from the greater world about it.

Publishers Weekly

In a gorgeous hybrid of naturalist observation, novelistic invention and philosophical meditation, Klinkenborg, a member of the New York Times editorial board and chronicler of the rural life (Making Hay), views the English countryside through the eyes of a tortoise and gives his human readers rich food for thought. For 13 years, Timothy the tortoise lived amid the bounty of 18th-century curate and amateur naturalist Gilbert White's garden. White, author of A Natural History of Selbourne, had inherited the reptile from his aunt, who had kept her (Timothy was a female, "stolen from the [Mediterranean] ruins I was basking on" and brought to "cold, manicured" England) for thrice as long. Timothy, as Klinkenborg imagines her, is melancholic, wise, resigned; her patient narration reveals extraordinary powers of observation and empathy: "the Hampshire sky staggers me now with loveliness. Creeping fogs in the pastures. Gossamer on the stubbles. The parish rings with light. Whole being of the world distilled into a moment." The only plot is the passage of time, and Timothy's scrutiny of life around her: humans are "great soft tottering beasts" who, blinded by their humanness, believe that "the language of the brute creation is no language at all." This "true story," as Klinkenborg describes it, offers studied, beautiful reflections on the present and memory, earth and weather, love and utility, human and beast. This is a wholly unexpected and astonishing book. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

This is a true story-so states author Klinkenborg (The Rural Life), a member of the New York Times editorial board. That it is told by a female tortoise named Timothy in no way discredits the fact that Gilbert White was indeed an 18th-century curate in the rural English town of Selborne and that a tortoise did reside in his garden. White, considered England's first ecologist, recorded careful observations of nature that made their way into his The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, a nature-writing classic that has remained in print since its publication in 1789. Timothy offers her own perceptive observations of life in the parish, adding an ironic and sometimes humorous twist to the assumptions humans make about life. For example, White sees the tortoise shell as a prison rather than a house that fits perfectly, while Timothy thinks human houses are extremely out of proportion to their inhabitants. Short, lyrical phrases flow like poetry, and there is much to ponder in this delightful little book. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/05.]-Maureen J. Delaney-Lehman, Lake Superior State Univ. Lib., Sault Ste. Marie, MI Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A dazzling riff on human beings and their weird ways "written" by an 18th-century tortoise that lived for years in the garden of English naturalist/curate Gilbert White and appeared in White's The Natural History of Selborne (1789). The shell of the actual Timothy now resides in a London museum and once covered a female, not a male (as White had mistakenly concluded). The Timothy that Klinkenborg (The Rural Life, 2002, etc.), a member of the editorial board of the New York Times, imagines is a fascinating creature with a brisk prose style (many short, sharp sentences and fragments) and significant observations about how we humans look, act and think. Timothy is troubled by the determination of the English to manicure and control the countryside (his single "escape" is prompted by his desire to find a place where he can "live in the ancient disorder of nature again"). He ponders our insistence on classifying the natural world, and he is puzzled by our gait, our failure to recognize that we are animals, our short lives, our burial practices, our clothing, our religion and our sex acts. On virtually every page is a phrase or sentence that entertains or amuses or informs. ("A tortoise," he says, "lives even longer than a bishop.") Timothy recognizes that we are a dangerous species: "The worst of their character," he says of us, "so often prevails." He expatiates upon chelonian sex and observes that reptiles present "no pretense of fidelity" the way humans do. He wonders about war, about our belief that the world exists for our use alone, about our fear of death-and our fear of life. Timothy the tortoise is a splendid social critic, a keen-eyed anthropologist who sees far beyond his shell.