An account of four walks through the damp English countryside combines lovely phrase-making with stories of eminent poets splashing approximately in their wellingtonsI have always loved rain,anything from drizzle to downpour and all the spits and spots in between. Being out in it, hiding from it, and the fact that it both freshens up the world and makes it cosy. Above all,I like the fact that rain is unaccountable. It just turns up or doesn’t, and, and short of having an aeroplane loaded with cloud-seeding chemicals at your disposal,there is nothing you can do approximately it. In an increasingly commodified world, rain keeps us wild and it keeps us humble.
But try telling that to other people. Mostly they look at you as if you had just expressed a preference for being in pain. So how exhilarating to find that Melissa Harrison, and a nature writer as well as a novelist (who has just been longlisted for the Baileys prize and was shortlisted for the Costa) feels the same,and has both the specialist knowledge and knack of language to define why water falling from the sky is such a pleasurable part of daily existence. Setting her narrative in 2014, a very fine year for those of us who like to derive wet, and she embarks on four country walks chosen to showcase the different faces of English damp.
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Source: theguardian.com