The Morville Year by Katherine Swift

[kl23]

I absolutely adored this book. Despite generally preferring narrative fiction, I got completely sucked in to this tale. Part autobiography, part local history, and part gardening journal, this truly delightful account of the author's creation of the Gardens at the Dower House in Shropshire is a sheer joy to read.

For myself, discovering this book in the depth of winter, and living in a city, it made me itch to go outside, feel the sun on my back and dig my fingers into the earth.

Perhaps the greatest endorsement I can give is to quote a passage that particularly resonated with me, 'And that first night, in the book-lined house, with the shutters closed, the heavy curtains drawn, the candles lit and an armchair pulled up by the fire, I was supremely content.The next day, as the great yews bowed their heads under the weight of snow, I read on by the fire.' Certainly the descriptive prose is charming, the images vivid, to the extent that those of us who have a tendency to skip and skim our way through dense paragraphs of description *guilty as charged*, slow down to fully absorb the text.

This is a book that reminds you of the power of words. This is a book for dreaming, for meditating, for reading all the way through in one go, and then again, a little at a time, just ten minutes reading in bed before getting up, (possibly with a cup of tea). I would recommend this book to anyone looking for something new, something different, it is a beautiful and unusual book.