Canons

3 total works

The Weatherhouse

by Nan Shepherd

Published 1 August 2009

Introduced by Roderick Watson. Garry Forbes comes home from the trenches, suffering from shellshock, to find a local girl claiming to have been engaged to one of his dead friends. He sets out to expose her fantasies by cleaving to his simple view of reality. The truths of inner experience, however, are more elusive and fluid than he ever imagined and he is compelled to acquire a more subtle outlook on life and people. The tiny community of Fetter-Rothie, with all its gossip and petty scandal, is delightfully realised in every detail. Yet Nan Shepherd builds a novel of great penetration and power within this small canvas, animated by images of light, darkness and space, and always informed by a Chekhovian eye for the humour, terror and strangeness to be found in everyday life. Nan Shepherd's first novel The Quarry Wood was highly acclaimed when re-issued as a Canongate Classic. This, her second novel, is considered to be her masterpiece.

The Living Mountain

by Nan Shepherd

Published 15 November 2008

'The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain' Guardian

Introduction by Robert Macfarlane. Afterword by Jeanette Winterson

In this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape.

Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us. Composed during the Second World War, the manuscript of The Living Mountain lay untouched for more than thirty years before it was finally published.

The Quarry Wood

by Nan Shepherd

Published 1 August 2009

When Martha accepts a place at university, her decision is met with a mixture of hostility and pride by her uncomprehending family. This is the story of a young woman's journey to maturity and independence, struggling to cope with the intellectual and emotional challenges that surround her, at a time when such space was rarely given freely to women.

In The Quarry Wood, Nan Shepherd's subtle prose is matched with intense and memorable descriptions of the natural world, and a dry sense of humour. Ninety years after the first publication, it remains as fresh and original today.