The Wet Collection

I picked up Joni Tevis’s The Wet Collection at David Mirvish Books in Toronto, “the art book store with the Frank Stella painting,” without knowing anything about it. I was probably drawn in by the Joseph Cornell on the cover and by buzz words such as wunderkammer, nature writing and memory - and it turned out the best book I’ve read for a while. It is a W.G. Sebald-style collection of essays, part memoir part travelogue, centering on themes such as outsider art, women’s history, geology and religion. See here for two short reviews. And read it, read it soon.