Review - No Straight Road Takes You There by Rebecca Solnit

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!