“An elegant and moving exploration of what it means to connect with strangers turns into an elegy for a much-missed way of life…”
I was very pleased to get this review of Hello, Stranger in last week’s Guardian from Keith Kahn-Harris. It is everything a review should be—meticulous, thoughtful and properly questioning.
The review ends with a reflection on the ongoing Covid-19 situation:
So while Hello, Stranger is a beautiful meditation on the pleasures and pains of a world to which many of us yearn to return, it may also be an elegy for a world that is lost to us for some time to come.
And certainly, as I worked through the edits of the book under lockdown, it was a strange time to be writing about living in a world of strangers. But I remain convinced that—when we can, to the extent it is safe to do so—keeping open the door to strangers is the way to go: not just out of a yearning to return to a temporarily lost past, but also out of our aspiration towards a better future.
