In this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape. Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us. Composed during the Second World War, the manuscript of The Living Mountain lay untouched for more than thirty years before it was finally published.
Hill-walking was Shepherd's great love; her single collection of poetry, 'In the Cairngorms', expresses an intensity of deep kinship with nature. They are poems written with the perception of one who has climbed the mountains and truly knows them.
Edited and introductions by Roderick Watson. The Quarry Wood, although published well before Sunset Song, inhabits a similar world; the progress of its heroine could almost be the alternative story of a Chris Guthrie who did go to university. Compassionate and humorous, the grace and style of Shepherd’s prose is heightened by a superb ear for the vigorous language of the north-east. The Weatherhouse, Shepherd’s masterpiece, is an even more substantial achievement which belongs to the great line of Scottish fiction dealing with the complex interactions of small communities, and especially the community of women – a touching and hilarious network of mothers, daughters, spinsters and widows. It is also a striking meditation on the nature of truth, the power of human longing and the mystery of being. The third and final novel, A Pass in the Grampians, describes Jenny Kilgour’s coming of age as she has to choose between the kindly harshness of her grandfather’s life on a remote hill farm, and the vulgar and glorious energy of Bella Cassie, a local girl who left the community to pursue success as a singer, and has now returned to scandalise them all. The Living Mountain is a lyrical testament in praise of the Cairngorms. It is a work deeply rooted in Shepherd’s knowledge of the natural world, and a poetic and philosophical meditation on our longing for high and holy places. This is the first omnibus edition of Shepherd’s prose works – her sensitivity and powers of observation raise her work far above the status of regional literature and into the front rank of Scottish writing.
In the 1930s, the writer and poet, Nan Shepherd was one of North-East Scotland's best known literati. Her image now graces the new Scottish £5 note; The Living Mountain has become a classic and sells in its thousands. Nan Shepherd lived all her life in Deeside, yet few people, even in Scotland, seem to have heard of her. But then, indifferent to celebrity, Nan Shepherd had a talent for silence. Long overdue, this first biography, unravels some of the mysteries, dispels some of the rumours and gives insight into the life and work of this perceptive and intensely private woman.
"Should appeal to all rugged individualists who dream of escape to the forest."—The New York Times Book Review Sam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in New York City with his family, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountains to live in the woods—all by himself. With only a penknife, a ball of cord, forty dollars, and some flint and steel, he intends to survive on his own. Sam learns about courage, danger, and independence during his year in the wilderness, a year that changes his life forever. “An extraordinary book . . . It will be read year after year.” —The Horn Book
Fifty writers on life, art and writing from twenty-two years of Brick, A Literary Journal. Founded in 1977, Brick, A Literary Journal features a great many of the world’s best-loved writers, and has readers in every corner of the planet. The magazine prizes the personal voice and celebrates opinion, passion, revelation, and the occasional bad joke. This anthology, which collects some of the very best work to appear in Brick over the last twenty-two years, is an essential collection of some of the finest writers at work today including, John Berger, Fanny Howe, Don DeLillo, Elizabeth Hay, Colm Tóibín, A.L. Kennedy, Alistair McLeod, Tim Lilburn, Jane Rule and Jeffrey Eugenides to name but a few. Full of invigorating and challenging literary essays, interviews, memoirs, travelogues, belles lettres, and unusual musings, The New Brick Reader is the perfect introduction for those new to Brick and an ideal treasury for the magazine’s many fans. Contributors include Rob Fyfe, Alistair Macleod, Michael Ondaatje (interview with Malouf), Annie Proulx, Brand, Creeley, Rushdie, CD Wright, Atwood, Gibson, Russell, Banks (what I'd be if not a writer), Peter Harcourt, Jane Rule, James Wood (interviews W G Sebald), Helen Garner, Elizabeth Hay, Michael Helm, Jeffrey Eugenides, Roo Borson, Jonathan Lethem, Tim Lilburn, Robert Creeley, Michelle Orange, Fanny Howe, A. L. Kennedy, Semi Chellas, Don DeLillo, Alistair Bland, Dionne Brand, Esta Spalding (interviews David Sedaris), John Berger, Clark Blaise, Jim Harrison, Clayton Ruby, Robert Hass, George Toles, Stephan Bureau (interview with Mavis Gallant), Roberto Bolano & Forrest Gander, Leon Edel (Craig Howes), Paule Anglim (interview with Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia), Colm Toibin, Don Paterson, Albert Nussbaum, W.S. Merwin, Sean Michaels, Charles Foran, Colum McCann & R. Chandran Madhu, Melora Wolff, and Eleanor Wachtel (with Anne Carson).
The women of the tiny town of Fetter-Rothnie have grown used to a life without men, and none more so than the tangle of mothers and daughters, spinsters and widows living at the Weatherhouse. Returned from war with shellshock, Garry Forbes is drawn into their circle as he struggles to build a new understanding of the world from the ruins of his grief. In The Weatherhouse Nan Shepherd paints an exquisite portrait of a community coming to terms with the brutal losses of war, and the small tragedies, yearnings and delusions that make up a life.
When Martha accepts a place at university, her decision is met with a mixture of hostility and pride by her uncomprehending family. This is the story of a young woman's journey to maturity and independence, struggling to cope with the intellectual and emotional challenges that surround her, at a time when such space was rarely given freely to women. In The Quarry Wood, Nan Shepherd's subtle prose is matched by intense and memorable descriptions of the natural world, and a dry sense of humour. Ninety years after its first publication, it remains as fresh and original today.
Written by a young human rights worker, "Silence on the Mountain" is a virtuoso work of reporting and a masterfully plotted narrative tracing the history of Guatemala's 36-year internal war, a conflict that claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people.
