This narrative is well written with wonderfully vivid descriptions throughout. The descriptions were the best part actually-- well done! The main character works at a library and thinks about his life sharing tons of day dreaming as well as observations bringing readers along. It was a quick read was mostly a book of description making it almost feel poetic.

Walking Through Brambles by G. W. Latimer was a relaxing escape, and so much funnier than I expected. From his observations about yellow cat and fatherhood to his day to day life at the library, his observations and dry sense of humor had me laughing several times. I can see how many might miss the humor, but it's there and so rewarding. This book reads more like a diary or journal than a novel, but I took to reading it at night before bed. The authors' voice is calming--a perfect end to a busy day in this noisy and often stressful world. The title is very appropriate.

Final note, I spend a lot of time in my local libraries writing, and I constantly make up stories about regular visitors too, so I enjoyed this component of the story very much. I think someone has to spend a lot of time in libraries to appreciate why.

I would read more by this author.

A self proclaimed exile is rediscovering himself and trying to build a new life for himself in a small town in Oregon.

Adam has to find himself before he interacts with others. He is also fascinated by the history of the woman who lived in the house before him.

The book is peopled with a lot of day dreaming and life seems to be a bit dreamy. Moving to a small town and starting a new life in a library could be considered idyllic by many. For Adam it was a way of life he looked at whether this would work for him or not. There was a fair amount of negativity as well and altogether it was not an easy read to pin down to review. I never really got to grips with the book but this could very well be my fault not that of the author.

I’m the first person reviewing this book (the publishers do not count and frankly I find it shameless and obnoxious that they even rate their own books) and I wish I had nicer things to say about it, but maybe there is a reason this book has received no other attention. Circumspection is a quality of being wary and cautious. So as such this novel’s subtitle is essentially a misnomer or at the very least a misadvertisement. Contemplation would have been much more accurate. In fact, this is very much a novel of contemplation…and not much other than that. It looks interesting originally, to me at least. The concept of moving to a small coastal Oregon town and working at a library sounds like a dream. Apparently the main character had the same idea, so he did just that and then proceeded to contemplate his life in a dream, plodding, pseudopoetic way. Armed with a feline and a supposed ghost of a former tenant who was an artist for company the protagonist ambles through his days in a gauzy daydreamy meditation, walking through his metaphorical brambles. Not just metaphorical, actually, going by the amount of text dedicated exclusively to the descriptions of local flora and, to a much lesser extent, fauna. The town appears charmingly quaint, but some of the appeal is diminished by the fact that it’s pretty much described as a place one goes to die. There is no plot as such to speak of, just thoughts and ponderings strung together. It sort of reads like one long prose poem. The language has a sort of studied very deliberate prettiness to it, but there isn’t much in a way of substance and the protagonist’s musings (for me, anyway) didn’t really comes across as all that profound or even especially compelling. Maybe I was just hoping for a very different sort of story. Or just more of a story would have been nice. Something more than descriptions, observations and reveries. This book read quickly, but offered almost nothing in return for the time, too ephemeral in its ways to care about or enjoy. A proper daydream about a coastal town idyll would have been more pleasant quite possibly. Thanks Netgalley.