Kerri ní Dochartaigh introduces Thin Places, a story of a wild Ireland, an invisible border, an old conflict and the healing power of the natural world.
20 Best Books of 2020
‘I’m sure many of us have sought solace and healing from the wonders of the living world during the anxious months of lockdown. This past year has been a golden one for nature writing … The most affecting book for me, though, was Rootbound: Rewilding a Life in which Alice Vincent, a champion of urban gardening who founded Noughticulture, delivered a poignant testimony to the joy and hope greenery brings to your life.’
Martin Chilton
Independent
‘If we re-frame lockdown as an opportunity to hibernate until spring, things begin to look a little less bleak … Look closer and you will see hope: green tips of spring bulbs pushing determinedly through the ground; the sugary pink and heady hit of viburnum, sarcococca and daphne blossom; the swelling, fuzzy buds of magnolia. For the first time in my life, I’ve had the time to notice these little wonders.’
Alice Vincent, author of Rootbound discusses reframing the lockdown, and the unexpected joys found along the way.
Alice Vincent
The Independent
Kate Grenville’s official website
Kate Grenville’s website has information on all of her books – from her very first (the short story collection Bearded Ladies) to this year’s A Room Made of Leaves – as well as essays available to read now.
“People told me I'd never understand sex until I'd done it, never understand combat until I'd been in it, never understand life itself until I was a father. But when the day arrived for each of those things, I didn't find myself with any new wisdom. Just a girl I thought I loved.”
“Attraction as physical catastrophe was not exactly news to Seamus Ferris. He had been besotted before.”
““Oh,” Barrington said, “the type that commits murder is a strong type, Mr Cadmus. A hard type. It does not delay.””
‘One idea that does come through effectively is how very far away, how very foreign the recent past seems. Those early 1990s might have seemed pretty humdrum at the time, presided over by John Major, but these days we look back on a politics that was “grey with sunny intervals — the frustrating weather of a functioning democracy” with almost tearful nostalgia … God knows we need a bit of a laugh and a thrill these days, books like this that are driven firmly by characters, setting and story.’
The Times
“Even that word, the, the least regarded word in the language, strikes me as absurd. How can there be the history? Beyond one the, watertight and trim, lies another, just as watertight, just as trim.”
“The child seemed to represent some kind of perverse alchemy that had taken place in the deep earth . . . where he was fashioned”
Evie and the Animals is out now!
David Ouimet works in his studio, drawing the rich world of I Go Quiet.
I Go Quiet
