Published By: Elliott & Thompson
Pages: 272
Released On: 12/10/2023
As the evenings draw in – a time of reckoning, rest and restoration – immerse yourself in this new seasonal anthology. Nature Tales for Winter Nights puts winter – rural, wild and urban – under the microscope and reveals its wonder.
From the late days of autumn, through deepest cold, and towards the bright hope of spring, here is a collection of familiar names and dazzling new discoveries.
Join the naturalist Linnæus travelling on horseback in Lapland, witness frost fairs on the Thames and witch-hazel harvesting in Connecticut, experience Alpine adventure, polar bird myths and courtship in the snow in classical Japan and ancient Rome. Observations from Beth Chatto’s garden and Tove Jansson’s childhood join company with artists’ private letters, lines from Anne Frank’s diary and fireside stories told by indigenous voices.
A hibernation companion, this book will transport you across time and country this winter.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Elliott & Thompson for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
Prepare yourself firstly for a long list of contributors. Some are modern authors, some historical, and some from entire books themselves:
Anne Frank, Sei Shōnagon, Olaus Magnus, Daisy Hildyard, Charlotte Brontë, Walt Whitman, Joy Harjo, Virginia Woolf, Tove Jansson, John Evelyn, Theophilus Kwek, Charles Darwin, Solomon Andrée, Daniel Defoe, Joseph Roth, Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov, Mathilte Sørensen, Damian Le Bas, James Frazier, Marchelle Farrell, Longus, Beth Chatto, Robert Louie Stevenson, Jorsias Ammonsen, Edwin Way Teale, Vincent Van Gogh, Alvin Aubert, Dorothy Pilley, Matthew Henson, Dorothy Wordsworth, Tim Dee, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Charlotte Du Cann, Ernest Thompson Seton, John Clare, Henry Davis Thoreau, John Rae, Carl Linnœus, William Scoresby Junior, Kenneth Grahame, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Sarah Thomas, The Quran, The Exeter Book, and Inuit Folktales.
Now, time for the review.
I thought this book would be right up my street. It felt all wintery and cosy and fabulous.
However, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I was expecting essays by writers about the winter, but it isn’t. It’s an anthology of pre-existing writings from across thousands of years that just so happen to mention nature during the winter.
At 272 pages, I assumed it would consist of maybe a dozen different stories. But as you can see from the long list above, there are a lot more than a dozen. Some are several pages long, others 1 or 2 pages, and some even just a paragraph. These are very short stories, which gives allowances to more contributors, which was nice.
It’s not all positive about nature in the winter. There’s tales of fun in the winter, of play, the excitement of the cold and snow and frost and promises they bring. But is also talks about the danger that the winter brings, about how much harm it can do to nature, to animals, and to our most vulnerable. It shows that you must always remember that nature will always win and we must respect it at all times of the year. Some tales are fiction, some non-fiction, poetry, religious, some modern, and some ancient.
It is good and I enjoyed it, but it’s a bit disjointed. I think it would have been better if the stories flowed into each other a bit more, but they’re quite random and so difficult to read more than 1 or 2 in one go, whereas I like to read through a book, but it was difficult to do so. But a beautiful book that I think would look lovely in physical form.
Books By Your Bedside 