After falling in love with Katherine May’s Wintering, I was eager to see where her words would take me next. So I reached for Enchantment, and it did not disappoint.
This time, May explores the idea of enchantment, not as magic spells or grand gestures, but as the quiet awe we experience when we slow down and pay attention. She describes it beautifully as “a small wonder magnified through meaning,” a kind of fascination that weaves through memory, story, and the natural world. It’s about those fleeting, tender moments when we feel truly connected, whether with ourselves, with others, or with the world around us.
The book touches on things like rituals, play, meditation, and the art of noticing. It’s a reminder that wonder isn’t something we stumble upon by chance, but something we practice. May encourages us to become better stewards of what really matters: to stay engaged, to seek out beauty in the small things, and to allow space for reflection in our daily lives.
That said, my reading experience had its ups and downs. Some passages were stunning, so lyrical I had to pause and reread them. But at times, a word or phrase would disrupt the flow, making the beauty feel momentarily out of reach. It was a bit like walking through a forest where the path is sometimes clearly lit and other times slightly hidden in the shadows.
Still, Enchantment invites us to slow down and look again. It reminds us to notice what we’ve been missing, and perhaps to rediscover a little magic in the everyday.
My Favorite Bits
The last decade has filled so many of us with a growing sense of unreality. (..) We were trapped in a grind of constant change without ever getting the chance to integrate it.
Katherine May, Enchantment
Burnout comes when you spend too long ignoring your own needs. It is an incremental sickening that builds from exhaustion upon exhaustion, overwhelm upon overwhelm.
Katherine May, Enchantment
We are forgetful species, obsessed with the succession of tasks that hover our days, and negligent of the grand celestial drama unfolding around us. And here I am, remembering.
Katherine May, Enchantment
I am by nature a solitary animal. I like to do things my way, and in my own good time. I’m resistant to timetables and demands on my attention, and to the kind of politics that always seem to arise between adults who join clubs. I have organized fun. Overall, I prefer to make my own ad hoc arrangements with a couple of close friends. But more and more, I crave being a part of congregation, a group of people with whom I can gather to reflect and contemplate, to hear the ways that others have solved this puzzling problem of existence.
Katherine May, Enchantment
Play is the complete absorption in something that doesn’t matter to the external world, but which matters completely to you. Play is a disappearance into a space of our choosing, invisible to those outside the game. Play is a form of enchantment.
Katherine May, Enchantment
Author: Katherine May
Publication date: 28 February 2023
Number of pages:
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