Reviews for Sippewissett: Or, Life on a Salt Marsh

The average rating for Sippewissett: Or, Life on a Salt Marsh based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-08-10 00:00:00 Yu Chung Tong Very poetic and thoughtful dive into the history, biology and mystery of a place near and dear to the author. It is very specific, ie a great thing to read on Cape Cod, but possibly not in other locations. He tries mightily to make it universal, and I am not sure he quite gets there. There were sections that felt like they could be cut, and I found it odd that some of the characters, often women, were only identified by their first names. This may have been at their request, but it comes off as a bit sexist.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-11-29 00:00:00 Gareth Hoffman There are passages in Sippiwissett of clear, enveloping description that brought me fully into the scene and into the marsh the book explores. But there are also long sections of more abstract introspection and overwhelming strings of rhetorical questions -- whole paragraphs comprised of one after another -- and that made it hard to stay focused as I read. There just seemed to be too much going on here, between philosophical and theological speculations, family history, personal reflection, scientific explanations, environmental advocacy, etc. Each of those was interesting in its own right, but the sum of them just didn't come together for me in a cohesive way. I think because the style of writing varied so much from paragraph to paragraph and page to page -- a more consistent style might have pulled the disparate ideas and interests together.