I love this book. It is funny, poignant, and important.
The author has been running an independent bookstore in rural Georgia for more than a decade. She’s been married to the same man for longer than that. She has no children. And she’s spent a fair amount of time wondering if all this — compared to the lives of “great” or “interesting” people she’s met, read, or heard about — means her life is simply too small.
Her doubts pepper the book. Maybe she should have become a journalist in New York City. Maybe she needed a PhD. Was she supposed to move further away from her parents? Perhaps she should have settled somewhere that wasn’t in the middle of nowhere.
She loves the writings of Wendell Berry and Wallace Stegner, but adds: “Staying [in the same place] isn’t exactly as [they] described it. It’s more effort, more boredom, more be-content-with-your-contentedness than I really expected.” Jones’ book is about “a life rooted in place, the blooming of possibility that can happen there, but also the hardship, the loneliness, the longing for more.”
Friendships, her relationship to church, her work as a small business owner, all come under the scrutiny of “should I stay or should I go.” And time and again, she decides to stay — to stick it out. I really appreciate the total absence of self-aggrandizing reflection as she tells these stories. Jones writes “I don’t know why I do that” more often than she offers a wise remark about what she’s learned from her gift of stability.
In these chapters she lays out her expectations, disappointments, but also, ultimately, her deep satisfaction with staying in one place. Her message is “Your quiet, ordinary life matters.” It may be fun to try new things and experience the world, but a lot of people have to remain in a small, quiet place for whatever reasons, and they can live important lives there.
