A Line Made by Walking

Sara Baume — 2017

'When I finished Sara Baume's new novel I immediately felt sad that I could not send it in the post to the late John Berger. He, too, would have loved it and found great joy in its honesty, its agility, its beauty, its invention. Baume is a writer of outstanding grace and style. She writes beyond the time we live in.' Colum McCann Struggling to cope with urban life - and with life in general - Frankie, a twenty-something artist, retreats to the rural bungalow on 'turbine hill' that has been vacant since her grandmother's death three years earlier. It is in this space, surrounded by nature, that she hopes to regain her footing in art and life. She spends her days pretending to read, half-listening to the radio, failing to muster the energy needed to leave the safety of her haven. Her family come and go, until they don't and she is left alone to contemplate the path that led her here, and the smell of the carpet that started it all. Finding little comfort in human interaction, Frankie turns her camera lens on the natural world and its reassuring cycle of life and death. What emerges is a profound meditation on the interconnectedness of wilderness, art and individual experience, and a powerful exploration of human frailty.

Reviews

Moray Lyle McIntosh@bookish_arcadia

Dec 5, 2021

Frankie has decided to to retreat to her family's deserted and isolated home, vacant since the death of her grandmother, and eschew the modern, urban life that is feeding her misery. Fleeing art school she buries herself in the landscape and it's wildlife and finds herself slowly able to return to photography and reconsider the relationship between art and the world and herself. Baume had created something really quite extraordinary. Building her novel (though novel doesn't quite cover it) around the animals that Frankie encounters and the photographs she takes of them. These episodes delve deeply into her fracturing psyche, revealing events of her life and her quest to discovery her essential self. Baume movingly examines the power of mundane belongings to spark memory and to build a sense of history and identity. It's an intensely personal and introspective work that is more of a meditation on life than a story, the plot incidental and secondary to the beautiful writing. It is quite an achievement.

Jade Flynn@jadeflynn

Nov 20, 2021

Read for my 'Outstanding' N.E.W.T in Charms 2019 #magicalreadathon. Prompt - Read a paperback. Career choice - Ministry of Magic, Department of Mysteries Worker. A book that hits a bit too close to home to really talk about.