Location: Home > Science & Nature > Travel Writing > The Wild Places

The Wild Places

Author: Robert Macfarlane
Publisher: Granta Books
Category: Book

List Price: ~~Ł18.99~~
Buy New: Ł5.55
You Save: Ł13.44 (71%)

New (29) Used (7) Collectible (3) from Ł4.52

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

16 reviews
Sales Rank: 3181

Media: Hardcover
Pages: 340
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 6.1 x 1.5

ISBN: 1862079412
EAN: 9781862079410
ASIN: 1862079412

Publication Date: September 3, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 6-10 of 16

« PREV

1 2 3 4

A real treasure April 12, 2008
3 out of 8 found this review helpful

I cannot speak highly enough of this book, which tells the story of a fascinating series of journeys to wild locations around the British Isles.

It is written with obvious love for those places - the author's experience on the summit of Ben Hope being a single possible exception. The writing is superb - words are chosen and sentences are crafted in much the same way Macfarlane selects fascinating pebbles or birds' feathers from a shoreline and proudly displays them back at home.

The book is also very moving. It recounts tragic episodes from history in the Highland clearances and the Irish famine. But Macfarlane also writes about fellow author and environmentalist Roger Deakin - first of their experiences of joyfully exploring the wild places together, then of Deakin's untimely death from a brain tumour. Macfarlane's grief is palpable.

But this is, above all, an uplifting book and a reassuring one. Macfarlane comes to the conclusion that the wild places are not only in the extremities of Scotland, Ireland etc, but can also be found where we live.

For me, this is one of those books I will lovingly treasure and give pride of place on my own mantelpiece alongside the interesting shell and the fascinating pebble.

5 out of 5 stars

makes you want to get out there... January 17, 2008
7 out of 12 found this review helpful

A book that celebrates all that is so utterly wonderful about being on top of a hill when the wind gets up and the rain comes down. This young Cambridge don has taken an idea and seen it through with admirable commitment. He really does reach some pretty faraway spots and sleeps out in them! In extreme weather... Brilliant! We know that our ancestors or ascetic monks have done it, but it's another thing in the modern age to sleep out on a mountain without a tent in midwinter. He writes with flair and feeling - eager to capture why we all love to walk along the shore, up the peak, along the track. He is guilty of overwriting at times and he does get a little morbid regarding his friend (of four years) roger deakin. He doesnt quite have the natural humanity of deakin - read 'waterlog' for a real masterpiece. But that kind of wisdom comes with age. And here Macfarlane has left us with a book to inspire and jolt us into adventure. hear hear... am already planning my trip

4 out of 5 stars

Inspirational January 14, 2008
4 out of 9 found this review helpful

Ideal reading for anyone who feels it's been too long since they heard birds singing or smelt anything other than exhaust fumes for months. Macfarlane's personal discovery that 'wild' exists all around us and at many different scales is uplifting especially for those of us unable to get to the mountains and wilder coastlines.

Docked one star for referring to the Yorkshire Dales as the North York Moors. Pedantic, I know, but one wouldn't refer to Dartmoor as Exmoor or the Cotswolds as the South Downs.

5 out of 5 stars

Utterly marvelous January 2, 2008
16 out of 21 found this review helpful

My Christmas stocking was bulging with some of the many books that have popped up over the past year or so to do with the wild places and wildlife associated with those places. This book is the first of my bumper bundle I have read and the rest have a lot to live up to.

This book reads like a dream. If there is a small degree of repetition in here, I believe it is because the author was trying to find common linkeages between the different types of wild places in the UK which he is able to do by performing the same acts but using the landscape differently in each one. For example he sleeps out doors in a variety of locations such as Bronze Age Brochs, under the storm lifted roots of a tree during a snow storm and in a disused hut on the moors. Same action but different experiences.

One small caveat might be that you have to share the author's enthusiasm for the countryside and the "wild" places to get the most out of this book. Also, by describing these places so eloquently and being specific about where they are, he might end up destroying what it is about them that makes them so special because, like me, many of the book's readers will want to visit these locations. Let's just make sure we don't all go at once!

3 out of 5 stars

Not as Wild as Wildwood November 23, 2007
55 out of 60 found this review helpful

Is it a coincidence that Roger Deakin and Robert Macfarlane were both writing a book with "wild" in the title at roughly the same time? Deakin, a friend of Macfarlane's, died shortly after completing "Wildwood", Macfarlane was completing his manuscript when Deakin died.

"Wild" is big book business at the moment and why not? 21st century European life seems to guarantee a divorce between self and environment and people turn to books, if not their walking boots, to fill the gap. Macfarlane visits the wild places of the British Isles and tries to capture their essence in prose for those of us who don't want to stir from our sofas (that includes me by the way). It is an admirable endeavour and an enjoyable read, but I reserve the fourth star for the following reasons:

It is repetitive - there are 3 things that Macfarlane does on every trip: bathe somewhere cold, pick up a stone and sleep in the open. There are only so many ways to describe this routine, without reader fatigue setting in.

There is a distance between the writer and the rest of us he does not care to bridge. Who is he? Why is he qualified to write about the wild? What relevance does it have to the rest of his life? Without answers to these questions, I can't connect with the writing and it becomes chilly and perhaps a touch preachy.

The anecdotes that provide the contrast with the description of place tend to be perfunctory and, again, repetitive. The Highland Clearances and the Potato Famine both figure. There seem to be several poets who keep mental illness at bay/achieve inspiration by walking in the countryside. There are probably general lessons about the historical reasons for some areas being people-free and our relationship with nature, but Macfarlane is coy about drawing them out.

In summary: worth reading, but Deakin is better.