Description
Book SynopsisThis beautiful record, on fine paper, is Crumley's homage to these noble creatures, but it is also an elegy, a love song to one swan whose silent tragedy he watched from one season to the next.
‘A small mound on white feathers lies on a tussock of grass made grey by a Highland winter. It is all the monument there will ever be to the life of a swan.’
With these words, and those that follow, Jim Crumley has ensured that there will be a more enduring witness to the life of this swan, and of all swans, than that pyre of white feathers.
Crumley watches, year in year out, as a pair of mute swans struggles, against the odds, to raise young on a wild patch of lock. But the pen starts to lose her eggs to predators; and the cob begins to disappear for longer and longer periods. Until comes the day when a third swan, stronger and younger than the first pen, appears at the other end of the loch.
This journal of a swan-watcher, as he calls himself, is an elegy to these noble creatures; and most poignantly it is a memorial to one swan, whose silent drama he has recorded.
Trade ReviewA book to be treasured -- Rosamund Young, author of The Secret Life of Cows
It's lovely. So gentle and understated, and yet so poignant and connected. -- Chris Packham, author of Fingers in the Sparkle Jar
This is only a short tale, but it is delicately told, and the fate of the abandoned mate is movingly described * The Times *
With exquisite engravings by Harry Brockway [this] is a perfect miniature... [Crumley's] prose style remains as elegant as his white-plumed subjects -- Leslie Duncan * Glasgow Herald *
You will want to read it again and again... a lovely book -- Andrew Currie
Jim Crumley is the pre-eminent Scottish nature writer * Guardian *
Extremely well written and beautifully illustrated -- Colin Gibson * Dundee Courier *
The best nature writer working in Britain today * Los Angeles Times *
Enchanting * Good Book Guide *
Crumley conveys the wonder of the natural world with honesty and passion and, yes, poetry -- Susan Mansfield * Scottish Review of Books *
