Finally, a silver lining to this pandemic to bring in the New Year: a new bookshop has just opened in Beaminster. Little Toller Books, brainchild of the eponymous publisher, is a brilliant new addition to the local literary scene. This month\u2019s slim pickings are some of my favourite pieces of nature writing\u2014something Little Toller has championed in the publishing side of its business\u2014and can all be bought from their new bookshop. I urge you to pay them a visit.<\/p>\n
Horatio Clare\u2019s Orison for a Curlew<\/em> may be prose, but his elegiac lyricism makes the pages of this book read like poetry. Clare traces the migratory passage of the slender-billed curlew across southern Europe and the Balkans, as he searches for this possibly-extinct bird. The narrative is darkened by many of the issues that plague modern conservation efforts\u2014habitat destruction, hunting, pollution\u2014but is lightened by exquisite descriptions of \u2018dozy dolomitic scenery in ageing lemon sunlight\u2019, clouds of black storks jumping like \u2018an ambush of Hussars\u2019 and philosophic musings from the people he meets.<\/p>\n Peregrine<\/em> by J.A. Baker is over half a century old but remains as gut-grabbing now as when it was first published. An intense, exultant narrative, it follows Baker\u2019s life-long obsession with peregrine falcons in Essex. His imagery is visceral prose: a dead wood pigeon \u2018purple and grey like broccoli\u2019, \u2018clear black lunar shadows\u2019 and a darkened ridge with \u2018a bloom on it like the dust on the skin of a grape\u2019. No less engaging is the author\u2019s consciousness of his own species. \u2018We are the killers. We stink of death\u2019, writes Baker of human impact on the natural world. And yet \u2018Nothing is as beautifully, richly red as flowing blood on snow. It is strange that the eye can love what the mind and body hate.\u2019<\/p>\n Helen Macdonald\u2019s hotly-anticipated Vesper Flights<\/em> is a collection of essays. She takes us from the vanishing countryside to the vespers Macdonald chants as she tries to sleep, with one of the best pieces taking us to the very top of a tower block in New York City. This is an intimate portrayal of loss, personal connection to nature and musing on the destruction of our fellow species. The title\u2014relating to evening devotional prayers \u2018the last and the most solemn of the day\u2019\u2014was chosen, MacDonald writes, because it\u2019s \u2018the most beautiful phrase, an ever-falling blue\u2019. The tone of the narrative is set…<\/p>\n Elizabeth Tova Bailey\u2019s The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating<\/em> is a quiet narrative that packs an outsized punch. Suffering from an undisclosed illness, Bailey finds solace in a wild snail, which she keeps in a terrarium by her sickbed. From observations on molluscan anatomy to the snail\u2019s various daily habits, the author falls into the rhythm of its life and movements. The snail helps her find a greater understanding of her own place in the world\u2014with survival sometimes dependent on something as ephemeral as noticing \u2018the way the sun passes through the hard seemingly impenetrable glass of a window and warms the blanket.\u2019 A wise, subtle book about living with chronic illness and how appreciation of the smallest details in the natural world can deepen our lives.<\/p>\n Diary of a Young Naturalist<\/em> by Dara McAnulty was one of 2020\u2019s publishing sensations. The narrative follows a year in 15-year-old McAnulty\u2019s life after his family moved from one region of Northern Ireland to another. Written in diary-form, McNulty explores his connection to wildlife and the way he sees the world; about his dream of \u2018enabling our own wildness\u2019 because \u2018We need to feel the earth, and hear birdsong. We need to use our senses to be in the world\u2019. McAnulty was diagnosed with autism and Asperger\u2019s as a child; this experience is closely bound with his writing and communion with the natural world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Finally, a silver lining to this pandemic to bring in the New Year: a new bookshop has just opened in Beaminster. Little Toller Books, brainchild of the eponymous publisher, is a brilliant new addition to the local literary scene. 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