This is such a beautiful book, filled with wild and wonderful thoughts and memories of Shetland over 17 years, it caught me quite unawares. Award-winning author Jen Hadfield is a poet and oh my, her gift with words transports into the eloquence of this autobiography. Shaetlan words and phrases and their meanings are explored, this paired with her own powerful expression and style transports you to her centre of the world. The years flow, from the past into the present, though mostly time ceases to exist. It felt to me as though the author was often testing herself and pursuing her fears, reaching out, truly living in the moment and experiencing our natural world. Yet this wasn’t done in a thrill-seeking way as such, it was more connective than that, she was tuning into the world in which she was living. While the wonders of nature and the islands themselves sit at the forefront, community and friendship share the stage. The author’s love of these islands and its people shines and shimmers through the pages. I have fallen in love with this book, and therefore with the Shetland Islands as seen through her eyes. I just had to include this autobiography as both a LoveReading Star Book and Liz Pick of the Month. Bold and stormy, tender and thoughtful, Storm Pegs is a stimulating and inspiring read.
'Storm Pegs perfectly captures the knotting of language and landscape. I was transported.' - Katherine May, Sunday Times bestselling author of Wintering
From the winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize and theHighland Book Prize
What if the answer to 'Where am I?' is 'heaven'?
In her late twenties, celebrated poet Jen Hadfield moved to the Shetland archipelago to make her life anew. A scattering of islands at the northernmost point of the United Kingdom, frequently cut off from the mainland by storms, Shetland is a place of Vikings and myths, of ancient languages and old customs, of breathtaking landscapes and violent weather. It has long fascinated travellers seeking the edge of the world.
On these islands known for their isolation and drama, Hadfield found something more: a place teeming with life, where rare seabirds blow in on Atlantic gales, seals and dolphins visit its beaches, and wild folk festivals carry the residents through long, dark winters. She found a close-knit community, too, of neighbours always willing to lend a boat or build a creel, of women wild-swimming together in the star-spangled winter seas. Over seventeen years, as bright summer nights gave way to storm-lashed winters, she learned new ways to live.
In prose as rich and magical as Shetland itself, Hadfield transports us to the islands as a local; introducing us to the remote and beautiful archipelago where she has made her home, and shows us new ways of living at the edge.
