This Desert Hides Nothing by Ellen Meloy

This Desert Hides Nothing Reviews

• 
  Patricia

  A lovely way to slow down and savor Meloy's lyrical prose.
• 
  Chris LaTray

  These lines from Ellen Meloy, pulled from the context of the complete works she published, become poetry, particularly in the choices made in pairing them with Stephen Strom's photography. I love this kind of thing, a book to sit and relax with, an opportunity to feel the expression of two gifted minds working in tandem. This book isn't one so much for the shelf as it is the side table, where it can be picked up and experienced again and again.
• 
  Jon

  The small excerpts from Meloy’s writings are very nice. It’s Strom’s photographs though that really carry this book.
• 
  J Earl

  This Desert Hides Nothing combines Ellen Meloy's writing with Stephen Strom's photography. Unfortunately, the review copy they have made available just has a few excerpts from the book so I can not say whether they are truly indicative of the book as a whole and definitely can't say whether they add up to an overall feeling or just a bunch of isolated couplings.
  
  The format consists of a short piece, a few sentences maybe, from Meloy on one page and a photograph from Strom on the facing page. The idea is that they speak to and inform each other. For the short excerpt (9 such couplings) I saw they worked fairly well. I would hope that the idea is that each themed section also works to make an overarching statement, but that is a guess and there is not enough evidence presented in this copy to make such a determination. Maybe the book is a powerful combination of word and image, maybe it is a mishmash without any sense of wholeness or purpose.
  
  This review copy is a major disappointment, there simply isn't enough to make a positive, or for that matter a negative, assessment. In other words, it was pointless. Don't buy this book sight unseen. There must be a reason to avoid offering a complete review copy since neither file size for electronic copies nor the cost of shipping for physical copies is a problem for similar books rich in images. If I ever see a complete copy I will happily update this review. Until then, well, not much to see here.
  
  Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss.
• 
  Amber

  Meloy was such a beautiful soul. The language with the pictures is absolutely beautiful.