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.
Publisher: Vintage PublishingISBN: 9781787300620Number of pages: 48Weight: 710 gDimensions: 200 x 130 x 5 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
A book to be treasuredIt's lovely. So gentle and understated,and yet so poignant and connected.This is only a short tale,but it is delicately told,and the fate of the abandoned mate is movingly describedWith exquisite engravings by Harry Brockway (this) is a perfect miniature... (Crumley's) prose style remains as elegant as his white-plumed subjectsYou will want to read it again and again... a lovely bookJim Crumley is the pre-eminent Scottish nature writerExtremely well written and beautifully illustratedThe best nature writer working in Britain todayEnchantingCrumley conveys the wonder of the natural world with honesty and passion and,yes,poetry
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