Love Letters to the World

In this diary-like and occasionally twee collection, Geddes hews closely to her title as she addresses an extensive series of epistles to her “dear world.” She embarks on a personal inquiry into how to continue a loving relationship with the world and how to be at home in it: “I wonder if one can make one’s life into a series of projects. I wonder if finding a home within oneself is enough.” Geddes is not concerned with economy of language, nor does she engage in much wordplay or linguistic invention. Her lengthy questions and explications of quotidian discoveries read more as a spiritual exercise or meditation on the intricacies of being human. What saves this book from being too vague or sentimental is Geddes’s questioning of personal and ethnic identity. She discusses her own identity as an adopted Chinese-American: “I found a box of little Chinese clothes in my old closet,” Geddes writes. “The clothes used to fit a girl with a different name, a girl with flaming cheeks.” The work could have benefitted from some trimming, but Geddes succeeds in conveying some deeply personal reflections, “a memoir of all the humdrum and intrigue.” (BookLife)