Book Review: This One Wild Life by Angie Abdou
Angie Abdou’s memoir This One Wild Life is a beautiful and engrossing reflection on the healing power of family and of time spent out of doors.
The book begins during a particularly distressing time in Abdou’s life after she comes under fire publicly and finds herself the target of unfiltered online bullying. This event, alongside other controversies and the nasty comments that follow, forces the author to revaluate her relationship with social media. In the midst of this personal chaos, Abdou finds solace in the form of a tree: an old growth cottonwood outside her bedroom window. She writes:
“It stood high above the rest and beamed energy, its positivity flooding in like sunlight. Its branches reached out to me. While I remained in a semi-dream state, the massive tree embraced me with unconditional love. A warm calm flooded through my body. Enraptured, I gave myself over to the experience of the tree. The warmth and calm gradually morphed into a full-bodied euphoric high. I let the tree love me” (p.40).
As the natural world leads Abdou back into a world of kindness, she can’t help but notice how her young daughter retreats from it. Katie is shy. At home, she is her typical outgoing, vibrant self, but around others, she withdraws. With various psychological studies and theories on child development stuffed into her backpack, Abdou sets out to embolden Katie with a summer of mother-daughter bonding. They agree to hike a Peak-a-Week, just the two of them, in their own mountainous backyard of Fernie, B.C. Of course, not everything goes as planned.
In a series of hilariously authentic, poignant, and at times, down-right terrifying vignettes, Abdou writes about the grandeur of the natural world, the comfort of family, and the ever-challenging escapades of good parenting. Both author and daughter come of age in this daringly honest memoir, each discovering what it means to live This One Wild Life.
Recommended for a quick, delightfully absorbing summer read!!
This One Wild Life Angie Abdou ECW, 2021, pp. 232. ISBN: 978-1-77041-600-0