“The Wind in the Willows” is a glorious summer book that may be one of a kind in its ability to stir the soul to the joys of the good life.
It may also be one of a kind in the way it brings a charming anthromorphization together with the complementarity of the temperaments with such tremendous depth of feeling and, as the opening of the tale puts it, a “spirit of divine discontent and longing.”
Witten by English author Kenneth Grahame in 1908, “The Wind in the Willows” is about the friendship of Mole and Rat, who meet when Mole runs from the doldrums of spring cleaning and discovers a river and a companionable water vole, who introduces him to this new expanse of the world….