I liked this one a lot, and it was so timely!! Some of the essays hit a bit more than others (the one about this NOT being a book of essays was a definite miss for me, especially when later she refers to the essays in the book.....) but overall I thought they were really good and carried a good message!

This is a reasonably quick read and considering how many impactful topics are covered it’s surprising that it doesn’t feel like too much. This is my first book by Rebecca Solnit that I’ve read and in places the language was a little complicated (for me), but in others it was absolutely beautiful. This book is making me think about important topics in a slightly different way, and for that I would recommend to anyone!

If you’ve read Rebecca Solnit before, you know what you’re getting into: essays that are sharp enough to cut glass, beautiful enough to make you pause mid-sentence, and absolutely unafraid to call out the systems that are actively trying to kill us. No Straight Road Takes You There is no exception. This collection covers women’s rights, climate grief, the crumbling state of democracy, toxic masculinity, and what hope can look like when it’s held together with duct tape and fury.

There were moments in here that made me want to cry (in a good way??), like a passage about storytelling as planting seeds in the dark—“some of them are gifts, a candle to light a corner of the room… some of them are seeds that grow, slowly, in the dark.” THAT LINE. That’s what this whole book feels like. Solnit isn’t here to hand you a solution wrapped in a bow. She’s here to say, “Hey, I don’t know if this will bloom, but I’m planting it anyway. Join me.”

But also… rage. So much rage. The essay Masculinity as Radical Selfishness just cracked something open in me. The way Solnit lays out how women’s professional lives were gutted during the pandemic—not because women failed, but because men refused to step up. And how that gets framed as a “women’s issue” instead of a systemic failure of shared responsibility? It was infuriating in that clear, quiet, undeniable way that makes your stomach drop. No yelling needed. Just truth.

Here’s the thing: this book is powerful. It’s eloquent. It’s full of moments that will make you feel less alone in your fury and more seen in your quiet hope. But I also couldn’t shake the feeling that it’s preaching to the choir. The people who most need to read this? They won’t. And those of us who do? We already know this truth in our bones—we’ve just never heard it put quite this beautifully before.

So yeah. Solnit planted some seeds in me. I don’t know what’ll grow from them. But I’ll be tending the soil.

End note, as always:
Rebecca Solnit could write “patriarchy sucks” on a post-it note and I’d still highlight it.

Thank you to Haymarket Books for the free ebook to review.

I avoid cursing in my reviews, so let me just say that @#$%&! This was really good. Usually in an essay collection there are one or two that can't quite grab me, but not here. I also felt it was a perfect length with fanatstic pacing. It wasn't overwhelming and the essays really grabbed me even if most of them had content I was already familiar with. I'd heard so many things about Solnit's writing, and now I have got to get my hands on her backlist.

The first few chapters were a bit dense, but once I found my footing, I appreciated the richness of this collection. It does a great job of exploring topics at the intersection of race, gender and environmental issues. This is a read that offers some hope and optimism at a moment in time when so many things in the world are infuriating and tough.

This is copied directly from my blog:

Title: No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain*


Author: Rebecca Solnit


*This post contains affiliate links. If you make purchases after using these links, I will earn a percentage of your purchase without any further cost to you.


Rating: 3.5 stars / 5 stars


Favorite Quote: “Being a parent is expensive. Being a criminal is also expensive, whether you lose economic opportunities to avoid apprehension or spend money on your defense if apprehended or go to prison and lose everything and, marked as a felon, emerge unemployable. Abortion is an economic issue, because when it’s not legal, those who are the two remaining options, leaving out being dead, which you could argue is either very expensive or absolutely beyond the realm of money.” Solnit, Rebecca. No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain. Haymarket Books, 2025, e-book ed.


Review: Thank you to the Netgalley platform and the publisher, Haymarket Books, for the free e-ARC that I received in exchange for an honest review.


Diving back into Rebecca Solnit feels a bit like coming home. I read Men Explain Things to Me years ago, in many ways an entry into my own conscious awareness of sexism and its violence, and in college I also read A Field Guide to Getting Lost. The opportunity to read yet another of her books, this time for this blog, was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.


Let’s start with what’s working - Rebecca Solnit’s mastery of the metaphor is unmatched. Early in the book - a series of essays written in the time surrounding the pandemic - is at its core an essay about the environment (many of the essays in this book are) is an essay that draws out a metaphor about violins to explore climate change. chef’s kiss


Solnit also manages to take fairly complex issues and write about them both lyrically, but also in a way that makes those issues seem accessible to readers.


You may notice, however, that my rating isn’t particularly high. I liked this book. But I didn’t love it. And in part that was because there were moments in which Solnit’s storytelling/metaphors leaned into what almost comes off as a white-savior complex type voice. That’s not something that exists within the whole book, but there are moments of it, and that certainly took me out of those essays.


About that Quote: I struggled to pick which, of many quotes, was my favorite. I actually was typing out a list and planning to say I couldn’t choose, and then I stumbled across this one. And aside from its power, with which it is pulsing, this quote exemplifies Solnit’s use of metaphor but readers are forced to reckon with how the metaphor becomes the reality. As abortion becomes criminalized, those who seek one become criminals. I think this quote also stood out to me because I work in the realm of the criminal system in this country and I see the carnage that criminalization of poverty (another point touched on in this quote) reaps across this country.


Have you read No Straight Road Takes You There? Share your thoughts below!

Over on my booktube channel (Hannah's Books), I shared this book in my description of exciting books forthcoming in May. Link to the particular discussion: https://youtu.be/4zoXuMKGD2A?si=jYMok6kc8vutOn_k&t=535

In this new book, Solnit offers us not just hope, but plans on how to correct the course the USA and the entire world is on through the power of aunties, feminism, and a reminder that revolutions are not won overnight, but happen through small wins and a lot of pushing. If you think we are doomed, I urge you to read this and refill your cup.

I want to start the review by talking about myself. I'm from Egypt, and as you know, we had a popular revolution in 2011. Unfortunately, things didn't go well afterward, and now we're living under a military dictatorship. Many of us have lost hope and feel that our dreams of change were just illusions.

Reading this book and the ideas Rebecca Solnit shares helped me regain the sense of hope I had when I was younger, when I truly believed that anything was possible. It reminded me of the drive I once had to get involved and take action.

Solnit's discussion of uncertainty and the unexpected future really resonated with me. For example, she talks about how the most significant changes often come from unpredictable events and grassroots movements that no one saw coming. These examples made me realize that even in dark times, there's always room for unexpected possibilities.

As ever, Rebecca Solnit has put together a fascinating and informative collection of work that feels essential and relevant to where and how we are right now in the world. What I love most about many of these pieces is that they offer a perspective that offers hope, even when speaking about dark subjects. She reminds us that we are resilient, that we can take a long view, and that we can be optimistic. It was a breath of fresh air, and one much needed by this particular reader.

Another thought-provoking anthology of essays from one of the most influential voices in progressive America. Solnit touches on many topics here, from climate catastrophe to feminism to democracy, always in beautiful prose and fresh ways.

Just keep in mind that this is a collection of separate, previously published pieces, so it is best read in small bites.

Thanks to the publisher, Haymarket Books, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

Thought provoking essays that tackle political responsibility and accountable activism. All of these essays to some degree made me turn inward and realize my own participation in passive and active demonstrations that bit by bit influence the world at large. At times inspiring, but, these essays never overshadow the true objective of the personal power of knowledge all along.

Rebecca Solnit once more collects insightful, clear, and hopeful essays about our world today. This volume is a counterpart to her earlier collection of political essays, "Hope in the Dark," which remains timely even when the issues discussed in 2004 have morphed in unexpected directions. Solnit is tender about humanity, able to see our failures but also our triumphs, and insisting upon the importance of those triumphs when despair is so much easier to reach for. She understands the hard work that goes into activism and change, and how there is very seldom immediate gratification relating to the work we do. More often it is slow progress, with apparent setbacks along the way that are dispiriting, sure, but that don't get to be the final word. A good reminder to hope and do work that aligns with your hope. And, as always, so elegantly written.

I absolutely adored this essay collection. Though the essays come from different times and places, this still felt like a tight and cohesive body of work. Every essay felt right, and none were any less important than the others. This was my first time reading Solnit's writing, and I loved her framing of hope as something that exists to spur action, rather than as the passive thing others think it to be. She discusses a range of topics, each grounded in reality and providing wonderful perspectives on how we ought to respond to current events. Among these were climate change, Indigenous rights, and the Trump presidency, but there were many more.

I was also pleasantly surprised by how she weaves personal anecdotes about nature and everyday life into her thoughts on political action. Slowing down is not a flaw, despite how our capitalist society obsessed with productivity might portray it; it is a vital thing we can all do in order to better consider long-term actions, as well as to appreciate the positives.

I really need to read more of her work now, and perhaps also reread this once it has been published so I can closely look at the essays again.

Another wonderful and resonant collection from Rebecca Solnit. Such beautiful (and much needed!) meditations on hope and the power of collective action.

No Straight Road Takes You There is a book of essays by Rebecca Solnit that explores the intersection of politics, literature, and imagining how the world could be.

I previously read Men Explain Things To Me many years back and remember really enjoying Solnit’s writing and her collection of essays. I was not able to get pulled into this book in the same way though and ultimately did not finish reading this book.

I don’t think it is the fault of the author but rather my expectations of the work, going in. I think I was expecting more of a memoir style of writing, which is not what this book is trying to do. If someone is looking for a collection of essays that includes cultural and literary critiques, perspectives on politics and current sociocultural issues in the news, this might be up their street. I was hoping for essays that felt more personal and were in the style of memoir, so this wasn’t ultimately for me!

I've read everything that Rebecca Solnit has written. She's one of those few authors where I will immediately read anything they put out just because I'm such a fan of their previous works. I've read her work as I've matured, and I'm proud to say that she has had an enormous impact on the way that I understand what's happening in society as it goes through changes. This new set of essays are fantastic and give us the language and context we need to make sense of everything going on in the world right now.

"No Straight Road Takes You There" is more than just a collection of essays; it’s a heartfelt meditation on the beauty of life's unpredictability. Solnit encourages us to accept the complexities and contradictions that come with our experiences, fostering a sense of resilience and hope amid uncertainty.

This book is a must-read for fans of Solnit's work, as well as for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of the intricacies of the human experience. In a world that often insists on clear-cut paths, Solnit's reflections on the winding roads of life offer a refreshing perspective.

I sometimes have the same issue with essay collections as I do with short story collections -- because you will naturally like some more than others, I often fall into giving them all 3 stars. This has happened again with this one by Rebecca Solnit. I have read several of her earlier books and felt the same. In this case, there are some essays here that happened pre or early Covid that feel either dated or not quite ripe for "post" consideration and those were the ones that fell a bit flat to me. Others were more evergreen (climate change) or more current/relevant. As always, some great nuggets in here, though.

I took my sweet time with Solnit's newest collection of acutely timely essays, not because it isn't good, but because in the current state of the world, I wanted—needed—to space these small injections of hope out for as long as I could.

"Even when the rock's at the bottom of the pool, the ripples are still spreading."

No Straight Road Takes You There begins with an essay about a three-hundred-year-old violin, and ends with one about a prisoner with a dream of seeing the ocean and visiting his mother's grave. A large variety of topics are covered in between, but the one Solnit returns to time and again is the climate crisis: At a time when every news headline feeds the vision of a bleak, uncertain future, Solnit is an optimistic realist, and makes a case for the fact that uncertainty holds potential; that not all is yet lost; that it's worth to dream of and fight for a better world.

"...the future is not as it is so often spoken of—as a place that already exists, toward which we are trudging—but as a place that we are creating with what we do and how we do it (or don't) in the present. (...) Hope is that recognition and a commitment to the pursuit of the better possibilities within the spaciousness of the unknown, the not yet created."

The thread connecting these essays is Solnit's plea to stop, zoom out, and look at the bigger picture, especially when things seem hopeless. Change is the only constant, but more often than not, it isn't one big event; it happens slowly, incrementally, and is often only noticeable when you take a moment to look back at where we started out.

As ever, her writing is engaging and accessible with flashes of poetic beauty, and her commentary sharp, nuanced, and compassionate; Solnit has a uniquely refreshing way of acknowledging all the ways in which the world sucks, while also leaving room for hope, reminding us of how far we have come, and how much further we can go—challenging work lies ahead, but not impossible work. In these bleak times, that's a comforting, inspiring thought.