Grassling

'Deliciously tactile and meditative . . . to read this is to luxuriate in the land, and to connect to it and oneself' Bernardine Evaristo

What fills my lungs is wider than breath could be. It is a place and a language torn, matted and melded; flowered and chiming with bones. That breath is that place and until I get there I will not really be breathing.

Spurred on by her father's declining health and inspired by the history he once wrote of his small Devon village, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett delves through layers of memory, language and natural history to tell a powerful story of how the land shapes us and speaks to us. The Grassling is a book about roots: what it means to belong when the soil beneath our feet is constantly shifting, when the people and places that nurtured us are slipping away.

Reviews

This astonishingly beautiful ode to the sights, sounds and smells of the countryside . . . [evokes] a richly immersive sense of the natural world and our place within it.