Adam Nicolson, The Seabird’s Cry

Update: The Seabird's Cry won the Jeffries Prize this week! Further update: it also won the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize for 2018! The subtitle to this stunning book is ‘The Lives and Loves of Puffins, Gannets and Other Ocean Voyagers’, but it really ought to include ‘Deaths’, because I have never read such a … Continue reading Adam Nicolson, The Seabird’s Cry →

Hand me a petrel: Robert Atkinson’s Island-Going

We're in the Outer Hebrides in the 1930s in this Really Like This Book podcasts scripts catch-up, on a mad quixotic journey in the roughest of conditions to locate, observe and tag an obscure little bird called Leach’s fork-tailed petrel. Island-Going by Robert Atkinson is a classic of nature writing, of social history, and of the … Continue reading Hand me a petrel: Robert Atkinson’s Island-Going →

Corncrakes on Coll: Kathleen Jamie’s Findings

This week's podcast scripts catch-up from Really Like This Book is a blissful swim through Kathleen Jamie’s book Findings. Like Robert Gibbings, she writes discursively, moving randomly but purposefully from one subject to another as the observations she’s making surface from her memory. Findings filled me a great desire to get on a boat to go whale watching, or climb … Continue reading Corncrakes on Coll: Kathleen Jamie’s Findings →

Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer

This time on the Really Like This Book's podcast scripts catch-up, I’m in very rural modern America, enjoying Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, where women are coyotes caring for their young, and a widowed scientist finds a new way to keep the family farm running. This novel is so intensely involving that, the first time I … Continue reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer →

The wild romantic haybags of Sarah Maine’s Bhalla Strand

A lot of people must go home from a summer holiday on the Scottish islands thinking, ‘I must write a novel about the Hebrides’. It’s a cliché, and a tempting marketing opportunity. I can imagine that publishers might brush aside their doubts about publishing a rather average novel if it’s set on Skye or Mull or wherever, … Continue reading The wild romantic haybags of Sarah Maine’s Bhalla Strand →