Description
Book SynopsisIn Heavy Time psychogeographer Sonia Overall takes to the old pilgrim roads, navigating a route from Canterbury to Walsingham via London and her home town of Ely. Vivid in her evocation of a landscape of ancient chapels, ruined farms and suburban follies, Overall's secular pilgrimage elevates the ordinary, collecting roadside objects - feathers, a bingo card, a worn penny - as relics. Facing injury and interruption, she takes the path of the lone woman walker, seeking out 'thin places' where past and present collide, and where new ways of living might begin. 'It is a talisman of a book. Heavy Time doesn't just describe a pilgrimage, it becomes one, for both writer and reader. It is an invitation to resist 'busyness', to think of ourselves as explorers, to seek out 'the everyday divine'. It has sent me out looking for 'thin places: pockets in the landscape where the membrane is so tightly stretched that other worlds might shine through.' Beautiful and essential.' - Helen Mort
Trade Review'It is a talisman of a book. Heavy Time doesn't just describe a pilgrimage, it becomes one, for both writer and reader. It is an invitation to resist 'busyness', to think of ourselves as explorers, to seek out 'the everyday divine'. It has sent me out looking for 'thin places: pockets in the landscape where the membrane is so tightly stretched that other worlds might shine through.' Beautiful and essential.'- Helen Mort; 'A fabulous read.' - James Canton; 'Heavy Time draws the reader in to join Sonia Overall on her pilgrimage... The book has the immediacy of a notebook completed on a journey, with marginal notes clocking up progress and beautiful little pen and ink miniatures by Oliver Barrett punctuating the text.' -Bobby Seal, Psychogeographic Review; 'This is a fabulously grounded, earthy book of practicalities. It’s immediate and intimate, a deeply personal story.' -Clare Wadd, Caught by the River
