Isabella Tree’s Wilding and Tim Flannery’s Europe

These two books about European natural processes are curiously connected, though I had no suspicion of this when I bought them. I was obviously in the mood for a sustained period of browsing on ancient species ecology and the prospects for reversing the mass extinctions caused by people. Looking for hope in the face of … Continue reading Isabella Tree’s Wilding and Tim Flannery’s Europe →

Now posting on Vulpes Libris: Frank Fraser Darling’s Island Years, Island Farm

Over on Vulpes Libris I've posted a review of the Little Toller reprint of Frank Fraser Darling's two books on living in the Scottish Highlands and Islands for several years in the 1930s and 1940s, Island Years, Island Farm. He and his wife and young son lived in tents and wooden huts on uninhabited islands, rebuilt … Continue reading Now posting on Vulpes Libris: Frank Fraser Darling’s Island Years, Island Farm →

The end of Pilgrimage: Dorothy Richardson’s Dimple Hill, and March Moonlight

This is the end of Pilgrimage, and for the first time I understand why Richardson named this sequence after a religious journey of self-examination and hope. I don’t understand the worship part, but I completely understand the point of her writing this journey, begun in wartime to say that all experience matters, and the future is something … Continue reading The end of Pilgrimage: Dorothy Richardson’s Dimple Hill, and March Moonlight →

Eco-dystopian sf curiosity: Naomi Mitchison’s Not By Bread Alone

This completely obscure eco-science-fiction novel by Naomi Mitchison from 1983 shares a title with another obscure novel, by Vladimir Dudintsev of 1956. Naomi Mitchison was not a Communist, but staunchly socialist, and had visited Russia in the 1930s. Both novels deal with the paradox of the individual’s intentions being devoured by the forces of the … Continue reading Eco-dystopian sf curiosity: Naomi Mitchison’s Not By Bread Alone →

Adam Nicolson’s Sea-Room

Today’s letter in the Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up is N, and today’s author is a Nicolson, Adam Nicolson, son of Nigel Nicolson, who was the son of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West (about whose novel No Signposts In The Sea I blogged about recently). Some time in the 1930s Vita saw an sale … Continue reading Adam Nicolson’s Sea-Room →

Now Posting on Vulpes Libris: Nan Shepherd’s The Quarry Wood

I posted a review of Nan Shepherd's 1928 novel The Quarry Wood over at Vulpes Libris today. Liked the novel very much, the first in a trilogy of north-east Scottish farming novels that I should have read decades ago, reprinted by Canongate as a collected works called The Grampian Quartet (there's a non-fiction memoir of … Continue reading Now Posting on Vulpes Libris: Nan Shepherd’s The Quarry Wood →