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blackbearbookclub's review
5.0
The next time someone asks me what I want to do when I grow up, I’ll hand them this book. Tending a sprawling garden after a day of writing in the rural countryside of Ireland. Who could want anything else (cancer and wind turbines excluded, of course)?
A lovely book on life and Earth we live it on. One that I will return to again.
A lovely book on life and Earth we live it on. One that I will return to again.
annieb123's review
5.0
Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.
In Kiltumper is a wonderfully written ode to gardening passion and life, and an engaging personal biography of an Irish garden by Niall Williams and Christine Breen. Due out in late Aug 2021 from Bloomsbury, it's 304 pages and will be available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats.
It's presented in chronological chapters, starting in January, and contains snippets and conversations from the owner/residents about how they came to move to Ireland from New York 35 years ago to make a life in the countryside writing and gardening and how they have impacted the place they live and how it's also shaped them, profoundly. It contains a number of rough line drawn illustrations which go very well with the casual, intimate details of the year and what their gardening life has entailed.
There's an almost lyrical quality to the writing, told in both the authors' voices in contrapuntal prose. The voices are delineated by typeset - italics interspersed with plain text and ruminating on subjects as diverse as climate change and windmill turbines to Christine Breen's encounters with cancer and subsequent treatments and recovery (including a truly harrowing account of her extreme allergic reaction to chemotherapy - *brr*).
Apart from the cover, which is lush and beautiful, the book doesn't contain any photographs, just beautifully written prose and the simple line drawings. I found it a perfect companion for a week's slow reading enjoyment. This would be a good choice for library acquisition, for gardeners, and lovers of horticulture, as well as making a lovely gift.
Five stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
In Kiltumper is a wonderfully written ode to gardening passion and life, and an engaging personal biography of an Irish garden by Niall Williams and Christine Breen. Due out in late Aug 2021 from Bloomsbury, it's 304 pages and will be available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats.
It's presented in chronological chapters, starting in January, and contains snippets and conversations from the owner/residents about how they came to move to Ireland from New York 35 years ago to make a life in the countryside writing and gardening and how they have impacted the place they live and how it's also shaped them, profoundly. It contains a number of rough line drawn illustrations which go very well with the casual, intimate details of the year and what their gardening life has entailed.
There's an almost lyrical quality to the writing, told in both the authors' voices in contrapuntal prose. The voices are delineated by typeset - italics interspersed with plain text and ruminating on subjects as diverse as climate change and windmill turbines to Christine Breen's encounters with cancer and subsequent treatments and recovery (including a truly harrowing account of her extreme allergic reaction to chemotherapy - *brr*).
Apart from the cover, which is lush and beautiful, the book doesn't contain any photographs, just beautifully written prose and the simple line drawings. I found it a perfect companion for a week's slow reading enjoyment. This would be a good choice for library acquisition, for gardeners, and lovers of horticulture, as well as making a lovely gift.
Five stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
debbiecuddy's review
4.0
The authors write beautifully about their garden, how they have made it over the past 34 years and how it has shaped them. It was relaxing to read about their garden throughout the year, but this book is more than just a garden journal. In addition to writing about their garden, they reflect on the impact nearby wind turbines will have on their garden and their home life. I never realized that in order to implement green energy, the green space that it is supposed to be saving must be sacrificed. I've never given much thought to the environmental impact of wind farms other than that they are cleaner than fossil fuels. This book has left me wondering about the future and asking if we really want to make changes that will result in a greener and cleaner world, or do we want to continue living just as we do now?
maryd_smallcraft's review
informative
slow-paced
2.0
Read with the Armchair Travelers Bookclub at ReadBooks in Virginia Beach
annarella's review
5.0
I didn't know who the authors are but I'm a keen gardener and a story about a garden is something I couldn't miss.
Gardening is spending time, being patient and loving plants and the earth, the authors did an excellent job in describing what is their life in the garden.
There're happy moments, difficulties and issues.
I found their stories and their descriptions fascinating. The style of writing is lyrical at times and they are good storyteller.
It's strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
Gardening is spending time, being patient and loving plants and the earth, the authors did an excellent job in describing what is their life in the garden.
There're happy moments, difficulties and issues.
I found their stories and their descriptions fascinating. The style of writing is lyrical at times and they are good storyteller.
It's strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
purplemuskogee's review
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
2.75
I have very mixed feelings about this book - some passages were just lovely, and some a bit cringy. The book is organised by month - starting with the New Year until December - with both Niall Williams and Christine Breen writing. Christine's paragraphs appear in italics, and the text otherwise is mostly Niall, which makes the collaboration seem uneven - and Christine's writing feels like footnotes rather than a contribution. It is a shame, especially given the fact I found Christine's writing more enjoyable - she delights in describing flowers, makes her experience very personal and heartfelt, where Niall mostly quotes other writers (Robert Macfarlane is a favourite, quoted every few pages.) Christine is described by Niall many times as an "instinctive gardener" while he portrays himself as the intellectual who likes nature but mostly writing and reading about it, with less practical knowledge. This was repeated so many times that he came across as a vain and pretentious man whose compliments towards his wife as his opposite - someone who feels the earth, and is definitely not an intellectual - passive-agressive. Reading Christine, she definitely seems as educated and knowledgeable as him, and her writing feels more genuine, as well as more pleasant - Niall has a habit of switching from the lyrical to the colloquial and starts every other sentence with "And," or "So," which I found distracting. He seems very aware of this and keeps writing things like "I'm not being clear enough here", resulting in the same ideas being expressed a couple of times because he cannot articulate them clearly.
Despite money being mentioned later in the book, when Niall complains that their revenue is unstable and hard to predict, they both seem somewhat tone-deaf: they moved from New York to Clare, where Christine's ancestors are from, bought the very house these ancestors once owned, "only following a prompting in [their] spirits that [they] wanted to live true to [their] own nature". They describe it as "a purely romantic impulse"with "no thought given to whether or not we had any talent, how we would actually make a living, nor what it would really mean to try and live from words and earth in a rural place on the edge of Europe". At that moment I was reminded of something Chelsea Fagan, (the financial blogger) said - "A lot of things that we think take a lot of courage actually just take a lot of money" (for example, "quitting your job with no backup" or "starting over in a new city") and it would have been nice to see them acknowledge that privileged position.
I also expected illness to be a larger part of the memoir; it does appear every now and then, as Christine has to do a checkup every six months and anxiously waits to know if she really is recovered from cancer; but it feels more like a side note than the essence of the book.
The essence of the book, really, is the wind turbines being installed 500 meters from their house. That's where the book really takes a turn for the worse as Niall and Christine both write extensively (Niall more than Christine, again) about their anger and complain at lengths about the wind turbines and the damage - trees being felled, roads having to be widened, the noise, the ruined landlscape. Anyone can sympathise with that, I doubt Greta Thunberg herself would enjoy living so close to three wind turbines. However Niall Williams writes so much about it that it becomes.... suspicious. Environmental concerns are only brought up in the last few chapters of the book, and while he recognises that green energy is important, he goes on and on about why wind turbines are not a good solution: they cost a lot of energy to make, they ruin the landscape, they are noisy. His solution? Have them all inside at sea, like what has been done in the US, so they are not visible and the noise cannot be heard. He fails to mention the fact that they will still take as much energy and create as much carbon to be made and transported to the sea - so really, the issue is just the proximity to his house, isn't it? It's fine - really, everyone understands that - but the bashing of "green energy" (he dislikes the term - it is not green as it creates a lot of carbon emission to be built and transported - which apparently defeats the point of having them installed) is too constant, too much. When he writes defensively that maybe he is just too old to understand, he seems aware of how he comes across: a boomer who never really thought about the environment and is devastated that the consequences of the crisis are reaching him.
When he describes seeing pheasants while on his walk to pick up some turf to burn in the fireplace, I had to laugh: peat is hardly a green energy, releases tons of carbon dioxide and their use accelerates climate change. When he casually mentions it after spending page after page complaining that wind turbines are not even "green", it's hard to believe this person actually reads about the environment or cares about it.
His rage about wind turbines being so near his house is, again, understanding. But I would have kept that rage for a sassy Tweet and not for 30 pages of my book on gardening.
I could go on but overall, this is a book that made me angry at times - the privilege that they never acknowledge, the hatred for the Green party ("the future will be much less green for going Green"), the poor writing many times - but there are also lovely passages. Christine's descriptions of what she grows are moving and genuine; Niall's recollections of his grandfather and his roses were enjoyable to read and very touching. But the whole book together felt clumsy and unfinished.
Free ARC received from Netgalley.
Despite money being mentioned later in the book, when Niall complains that their revenue is unstable and hard to predict, they both seem somewhat tone-deaf: they moved from New York to Clare, where Christine's ancestors are from, bought the very house these ancestors once owned, "only following a prompting in [their] spirits that [they] wanted to live true to [their] own nature". They describe it as "a purely romantic impulse"with "no thought given to whether or not we had any talent, how we would actually make a living, nor what it would really mean to try and live from words and earth in a rural place on the edge of Europe". At that moment I was reminded of something Chelsea Fagan, (the financial blogger) said - "A lot of things that we think take a lot of courage actually just take a lot of money" (for example, "quitting your job with no backup" or "starting over in a new city") and it would have been nice to see them acknowledge that privileged position.
I also expected illness to be a larger part of the memoir; it does appear every now and then, as Christine has to do a checkup every six months and anxiously waits to know if she really is recovered from cancer; but it feels more like a side note than the essence of the book.
The essence of the book, really, is the wind turbines being installed 500 meters from their house. That's where the book really takes a turn for the worse as Niall and Christine both write extensively (Niall more than Christine, again) about their anger and complain at lengths about the wind turbines and the damage - trees being felled, roads having to be widened, the noise, the ruined landlscape. Anyone can sympathise with that, I doubt Greta Thunberg herself would enjoy living so close to three wind turbines. However Niall Williams writes so much about it that it becomes.... suspicious. Environmental concerns are only brought up in the last few chapters of the book, and while he recognises that green energy is important, he goes on and on about why wind turbines are not a good solution: they cost a lot of energy to make, they ruin the landscape, they are noisy. His solution? Have them all inside at sea, like what has been done in the US, so they are not visible and the noise cannot be heard. He fails to mention the fact that they will still take as much energy and create as much carbon to be made and transported to the sea - so really, the issue is just the proximity to his house, isn't it? It's fine - really, everyone understands that - but the bashing of "green energy" (he dislikes the term - it is not green as it creates a lot of carbon emission to be built and transported - which apparently defeats the point of having them installed) is too constant, too much. When he writes defensively that maybe he is just too old to understand, he seems aware of how he comes across: a boomer who never really thought about the environment and is devastated that the consequences of the crisis are reaching him.
When he describes seeing pheasants while on his walk to pick up some turf to burn in the fireplace, I had to laugh: peat is hardly a green energy, releases tons of carbon dioxide and their use accelerates climate change. When he casually mentions it after spending page after page complaining that wind turbines are not even "green", it's hard to believe this person actually reads about the environment or cares about it.
His rage about wind turbines being so near his house is, again, understanding. But I would have kept that rage for a sassy Tweet and not for 30 pages of my book on gardening.
I could go on but overall, this is a book that made me angry at times - the privilege that they never acknowledge, the hatred for the Green party ("the future will be much less green for going Green"), the poor writing many times - but there are also lovely passages. Christine's descriptions of what she grows are moving and genuine; Niall's recollections of his grandfather and his roses were enjoyable to read and very touching. But the whole book together felt clumsy and unfinished.
Free ARC received from Netgalley.
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