Guest review by Linda Sargent: THE OLD WAYS - a Journey on Foot, by Robert Macfarlane

 

"What a complete joy it’s been, timely and so sustaining in these darkening times in our world."

Linda Sargent is a writer who worked for twenty years as a publisher’s reader (David Fickling Books since 2002). She has published short stories and articles and her first novel, Paper Wings, appeared in 2010; she is also the author of Words and Wings, a training guide to creative reminiscence work, available as a free download from her website. 

Tosh's Island, a graphic novel for children and based on Linda's childhood experiences, written in collaboration with Joe Brady and illustrated by Leo Marcell, was published last October by David Fickling Books, having first appeared in serial form in The Phoenix Comic.

A book about walking might not seem like the obvious choice for me, now a full-time wheelchair user, but this is about so much more than the mere physical act itself. As well as the obvious meaning, the “old ways” explore and traverse humanity’s various journeyings and their resulting connections over the millennia; covering not just the more well-known tracks, but lesser-known ones too, over mountains and even the those more fleeting passages across the seas. These are journeys rooted both in the physical reality of walking and, perhaps more importantly, that of the imagination. Over the years I have been giving it to more agile friends, but now since moving to rural Wiltshire with our monthly trips down to the Mobile Library in the village hall car-park I decided to add it to my order reserve list. And what a complete joy it’s been, timely and so sustaining in these darkening times in our world. I messaged the author as much on Instagram, not expecting a reply, but one came in the form of a warm and thoroughly empathetic response. Since feet connecting with earth is clearly so vital for the author, he seemingly totally grasped what I was trying to say about how I nurture and ponder the memories of past walking times, as well as continue such journeying vicariously via writing such as his, in many ways even more enriching as they mostly are in settings I would never have visited and never shall. Although that isn’t true of all, since there are places featured that are familiar, including Cambridgeshire, the Downland country of the south of England, Sussex, Wiltshire and my old home in the Kentish Weald, landscapes referenced through the author’s deep admiration and connections with the work and lives of Edward Thomas and Eric Ravilious which thread through this book enriching the reader’s experience not only of the land, but also these two artists.

So many paths trodden here, from Scotland, the Camino, Tibet and more. And not all are land-bound. His descriptions of the Sea Paths show a more ethereal, yet equally powerful way marking. He tells the reader (p.88) of the many names of these paths, for example “In Old English the hwaell-weg/the whale’s way” – invisible currents bringing humanity together over thousands of years, leaving no trace on the water, but resulting in a sharing of trade, culture, stories, songs, invasion of course and the aftermath of man-made upheavals. The latter with such a profound modern resonance.

It is impossible to do this book justice. For me it worked and will continue to work in so many levels through my own imaginative, internal world. As the writer says these are (p.198) “the landscapes we bear with us in absentia, those places that live on in the memory long after they have withdrawn in actuality”.

Yes. Exactly this.

(NB: I have recently come across a newly formed organisation called Slow Ways, a community initiative mapping accessible walking and wheeling routes and encouraging more to be developed. More here.) – see slowways.org)

The Old Ways is published by Penguin.

See also Linda's review of 12 Birds to Save your Life - Nature's Lessons in Happiness by Charlie Corbett

Alison Layland reviews Sarn Helen by Tom Bullough

Guest review by Yvonne Coppard: FLÂNEUSE by Lauren Elkin

"It has motivated me to ditch the car, don the trainers and become a flâneuse myself, wandering the city in which I live but know so little about."

Yvonne Coppard is a writer of children’s fiction, non-fiction for adults and occasional columns and articles in a variety of publications. She is currently a Writing Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, working with businesses and public service organisations to promote clear, understandable English in written communication. See more on her website.

Trying to describe what this book is and why I loved it will be a challenge. It’s part memoir; part cultural commentary; literary biography and history, underpinned by a skilful evocation of our human need for connection.

The term flâneuse is Elkin’s adaptation from the masculine noun ‘flaneur’: an idle, aimless wanderer. The flâneuse, like her male counterpart, walks the streets with no other purpose than to blend and observe. The seemingly small point about adapting language is actually fundamental to Elkin’s approach; she is a woman reclaiming territory that was traditionally assumed to be exclusively male. Although the term ‘flâneuse’ already existed, the Dictionnaire Vivant de la Langue Francaise defines it as ‘a lounge chair’. Elkin’s perspective is clear: search for images of ‘flâneuse’, she says, and you get: “a drawing of George Sand, a picture of a young woman sitting on a Parisian bench and a few images of outdoor furniture…. Is that some kind of joke? The only kind of curious idling a woman does is lying down?”

Elkin is a native New Yorker with experience of life in Tokyo, Venice, London and Paris, which is now her permanent home. She has negotiated the nuances that must be grappled with in order to make the change from tourist to resident; she understands the difference between living in a community and feeling integrated into it. Elkin’s account is infused with the keen observation and insight that being an outsider affords. She includes slices of the lives of flâneuses who have gone before her: writer Virginia Woolf; artist Sophie Calle; journalist Martha Gellhorn and film-maker Agnes Varda, among others. All of them were keen observers of the environments they moved through and blended into. Their stories are fused with Elkin’s developing insights into her own experience.

“Why do I walk? I walk because I like it. I like the rhythm of it, my shadow always a little ahead of me on the pavement… Walking is mapping with your feet. It helps you piece a city together, connecting up neighbourhoods that might otherwise have remained discrete entities, different planets bound to each other, sustained yet remote.”

Established in Paris, Elkin falls in love and agrees to move with her French boyfriend when he takes a job in Tokyo. Uprooted, displaced and unnurtured, Elkin struggles to connect with her new home and, ultimately, her partner. Her description of the final stages of their soured relationship is powerful.

“Dead words, dead tongue, dead of disuse, my mouth stuck shut… I said in your language, which I have come to speak, ta langue, ta langue dans ma bouche, and you’ve brought me to this place where my new tongue lies flat in my mouth. A crack in the road, the sidewalk blistered, how long has it been since I left New York concrete for Paris cobblestones? Why am I here, where I can’t ask for aspirin, or sleeping pills, where the yogurt aisle is a tofu aisle? I can’t think straight, I can’t make one thought lead to another, I just tell you I hate it and hate it, and I mean you, and before we know it I am breaking things and jumping up and down and screaming at you in your tongue, in my tongue, in my mother tongue. My mother spoiled me, you say. But you have spoiled us. I never thought I’d be here.”

The breadth of Elkin’s sweep across art, literature, history and politics is impressive, signalling its roots in the post-graduate research that led her to write the book, but her own story is the connecting thread that unifies the whole. Ultimately, it is the uplifting and inspirational account of a search for the true self, and the landscape that resonates with the soul. It’s a book that I think will be satisfying to return to again and again over the years, offering something fresh each time. Meanwhile, it has motivated me to ditch the car, don the trainers and become a flâneuse myself, wandering the city in which I live but know so little about.

Flâneuse is published by Chatto and Windus.