Woolf manages to capture the minute moments of powerful emotion we all experience through all stages of our lives and present them for us in honest, introspective ways that make our own lot in life all the easier to understand.

Freedom and Control is a deeply personal series to me still, and one which I cannot ignore even as more immediately tantalizing or literary projects seek attention.

They were stories about existence itself, of the power and rot of ambition, the beauty of simplicity, examinations of power and purpose, and introspective lenses for helping one better understand the confusing mass that’s just life. 

So slow down and do not merely eat. Taste and savor life while it’s yours.

The people of Telgora hold their breath…

To emerge from the tavernas and campos and come back to a world we ourselves are shaping and reshaping everyday, to say nothing the identities we make for ourselves and others, makes us question, as Sancia does, where we find our living and our liberty. What systems are we upholding, and how much do we really understand about even the everyday objects that uphold our way of life?

Honey, gin, lillet, calvados, and saline. Fermented honey, at that. Calvados bringing a note of apple. Gin, for all we joke, so evocative of certain elements of the New England demographic. There was literary potential for you…

All of this makes it sound like we’re already there, right? Well, no. We’re standing at the edge of the dark, bearing witness to something.

The story of the story of Madelen Penn and the courts of Vertet wrapped in a seductive mystery of murder and succession.

There is… a sense of wonder behind the drive an ambition that I hope you never lose.