Surfacing, Kathleen Jamie
Technically this is another book that isn’t in the library, because our copy of Surfacing was graciously signed by Kathleen Jamie at last year’s Edinburgh Book Festival (see you in 2021/miss you already), and so is kept in a glass displace case on the mantle. But by the time The Nature Library is out in the tangible, page flicking world again we’ll make sure there’s a copy of this on them.
Jamie’s first two books of short stories - Findings (2005) and Sightlines (2012), sing with stories of birds and whales respectively. In Surfacing, focus is turned to people. Throughout Surfacing Jamie commands the reader to look closely at our human relationship to nature and to ourselves, unearthing the stories, relationships and cultures that have been buried over time.
“... maybe it showed how readily, in this unfixed place, the visible shifts. Transformation is possible. A bear can become a bird. A sea can vanish, rivers change course. The past can spill out of the earth, become the present. ”
