The Past
The entries in this book were written during what would prove to be Dahl's last year of life. It is by no means a maudlin account of the final stage of life; Dahl makes little mention of the state of his health. Nevertheless, there is a sort of vaguely wistful, melancholic patina to the whole book that comes most prominently to the fore during the recollections of events from the author’s past. These are not presented through any sort of lens indicating an awareness of approaching death, but the foreknowledge by the reader that death actually was near instills them with an emotional tenor approximating that tone.
The Small Wonders of Nature
The dominant theme of the book is an appreciation of the miracles nature on its small scale. The reader will learn such interesting bits of trivia as the fact that a mole can excavate three feet worth of tunnel in an hour, to keep an eye out for baby adders during August, and that best month for picking berries is September. The unspoken thought going on here is related to the unmentioned aspect of death hovering over the household: a descent into frailty and ill-health can have the positive impact of making one more curious and observant of the finer aspects of the world around them.
Housekeeping
Housekeeping is a theme not in the typical literal sense of cleaning a home, but in the broader sense of taking care of the place where one lives. The book opens with a inventory survey of things the author can see from his place seated in his writing chair and it is an extraordinary litany of things given to and collected by a wealth and famous artist. These things also serve eventually as a counterpoint against which is juxtaposed the stripped down nature of keeping house by animals like moles, butterflies, cuckoo birds, and bees. Humans are portrayed as the only creatures who leave the world with an accumulation of stuff they don’t actually need or sometimes even use. By contrast, the lives of animals is simple, direct and, in a way, even more complete and whole. There are no leftovers in the animal world.
