Savage Gods
Paul Kingsnorth
Reviewed by Victoria Hudson
Paul Kingsnorth’s Savage Gods sings with introspective urgency, transcending plot and narrative to get at the heart of the questions he considers truly important: what’s the usefulness of writing and language? Why exist, communicate, connect? And how can we ground ourselves in a shifting, uncertain world? As an author of eight previous works, Kingsnorth is no stranger to the process of writing, but Savage Gods, which he calls “organic,” represents a departure from convention and a move toward self-reflection.
Kingsnorth sets us at his new family home in Ireland, using his surroundings to interrogate his relationship with place and contentment. While this book dives deeply into these personal philosophies, it also poses much bigger questions around our very existence. “We write,” he says, “because of life’s brevity and the need to blaze.” Though the text is highly contemplative and pulls from the philosophies of many writers and thinkers, Kingsnorth situates us firmly in the personal, drawing on his relationship with his father and his father’s death to illustrate the unknowability of other people and the lack of control we can exert over our lives and even over our own words.
“Life is not the shape of a book,” Kingsnorth says, and that’s why he’s written this one: to push back against narrative, to suggest another route. Deep but digestible, brimming with wisdom, this book asks: “Can you convey the heat of it?”