Overview

A National Bestseller ""A modern classic, one we very much need right now."" -George Saunders From the acclaimed author of The Shepherd's Life, a magical work of nonfiction in which James Rebanks reflects on a life-changing summer spent on a remote island off the coast of Norway, where his only companion was an old woman who practiced the ancient tradition of collecting eiderdown from birds that nest on this remarkable landscape each year We are all in need of lights to follow. One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on. Back at home, Rebanks couldn't stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly--and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come quickly: her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island. This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for gathering, like feathered gold. Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not what he had previously thought. What began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge and forgiveness.

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9780063434172

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Reviews

""James Rebanks's new book may be the most passionate ecological corrective since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring."" -- New York Review of Books ""Remarkable ... A brilliant, beautiful book ... Eloquent, persuasive and electric with the urgency that comes out of love."" -- Sunday Times (London) ""Thank the gods of agriculture for James Rebanks. ... A lyrical narrative of experience, tracing 40 years and three generations of farming on his family's land as it is buffeted by the incredible shifts in scale, market, methods and trade rules that have changed farming all over the world. ... We experience that esoteric life through Rebanks's evocative storytelling, learning with him to appreciate not only the sheep and crops he's learning to tend, but the wild plants and animals that live among and around them."" -- New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice ""Rebanks is a deeply gifted student learning from Mother Nature and generations of farmers before him. His wonderful and timely book is an account of one farmer's lifelong effort to do right by his family, his land, his animals and his ecosystem. Like Wendell Berry, he reminds us where to find the good work that needs doing."" -- Nick Offerman ""James Rebanks combines the descriptive powers of a great novelist with the pragmatic wisdom of a farmer who has watched his world transformed. English Pastoral is a profound and beautiful book about the land, and how we should live off it."" -- Ed Caesar, contributing writer, The New Yorker ""It's gorgeous ... I can't recommend it enough."" -- Caitlin Moran, NYT bestselling author of How to Be a Woman ""Beautiful and shocking, but ultimately so gloriously hopeful. The book we should all read as we emerge from this latest strangeness."" -- Paula Hawkins, #1 Bestselling Author of Girl on the Train ""A vividly-recalled memoir of a farming childhood, but also a forensic defence of the kind of agriculture that has nearly been wiped out. ... Perceptive, eloquent, and passionate. ... Rebanks writes so well that I can't imagine anyone starting to read it and not being eager to read it all at once, as I did, and not being moved by the life and the landscape he describes so well. I was thrilled by it."" -- Philip Pullman, #1 bestselling author of the ""His Dark Materials"" series? ""What a terrific book: vivid and impassioned and urgent - and, in both its alarm and its awe for the natural world, deeply convincing. Rebanks leaves no doubt that the question of how to farm is a question of human survival on this hard-used planet. He should be read by everyone who grows food, and by everyone who eats it."" -- Philip Gourevitch ""James Rebanks writes with insight, honesty and a deeply entrenched love for the land. English Pastoral is thought-provoking, often challenging and at its heart is a beautifully-written story of a family, a home and a changing landscape."" -- Nigel Slater, chef and author of Greenfeast ""Rapturous ... a paean to a more life-enhancing approach to farming ... For Rebanks writing and farming have proved complementary: while working long hours on the land he has produced a book in a pastoral tradition that runs from Virgil to Wendell Berry."" -- Blake Morrison, Guardian ""James Rebanks's fierce, personal description of what has gone wrong with the way we farm and eat, and how we can put it right, gets my vote as the most important book of the year ... Some books change our world. I hope this turns out to be one of them."" -- Julian Glover, Evening Standard ""Lyrical and passionate ... I was gripped from the very first paragraph ... Rebanks has shone a brilliant light onto a world about which the vast majority of people know little ... a cri de coeur for a healthier countryside, rather than a manifesto ... a magnificent book."" -- Literary Review ""He is eloquent -- scenes of mud and guts are interspersed with quotes ranging from Virgil to Schumpeter, Rachel Carson to Wendell Berry ... English Pastoral builds into a heartfelt elegy for all that has been lost from our landscape, and a rousing disquisition on what could be regained -- a rallying cry for a better future."" -- Financial Times ""I have been thrilled by English Pastoral, an account of farming by James Rebanks. A real working farmer, whose own reading runs from Virgil to Schumpeter, he lays out in great detail just what has gone wrong, and what can be done to put it right."" -- Andrew Marr, Spectator ""This elegy that captures the soul of British farming - its families and their land from which they are indivisible ... Rebanks's observations are rich with detail. He writes with a simplicity that hides his scholarship (how many Cumbrian farmers can quote from Virgil's Georgics?) and some passages are right up there with Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie ... This is a wonderful book. James Rebanks writes with his heart and his heart is in the right place. We should listen to him."" -- Telegraph ""James Rebanks's story of his family's farm is just about perfect. It belongs with the finest writing of its kind."" -- Wendell Berry ""Rebanks is a rare find indeed: a Lake District farmer whose family have worked the land for 600 years, with a passion to save the countryside and an elegant prose style to engage even the most urban reader. He's refreshingly realistic about how farmed and wild landscapes can coexist and technology can be tamed. A story for us all."" -- Evening Standard (London) ""This is a rare and urgent book whose beauty is not only in the writing but in what lies behind it: a gentle and wise sensibility that is alive to the human love affair with the land, and yet also intimately aware of our systematic cruelty towards it. James Rebanks reveals this paradoxical condition with great sensitivity. We are very lucky to have him."" -- Hisham Matar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between ""Moving, thought-provoking and beautifully written."" -- James Holland, author of Normandy '44 ""James Rebanks is a beautiful writer, in a unique position to describe the challenges currently being faced by farmers throughout the world. English Pastoral is a joy to read and extremely moving - a book which should be read by every citizen."" -- Patrick Holden, Founder of the Sustainable Food Trust ""A beautiful and important book."" -- Sadie Jones, author of The Uninvited Guests ""One of the most important books of our time. Anyone who cares about our land - indeed, anyone who buys food - should read this book. Told with humility and grace, this story of farming over three generations - where we went wrong and how we can change our ways - is at the forefront of a revolution. It will be our land's salvation."" -- Isabella Tree ""A beautifully written elegy to traditional farmers and farming methods. ... A lovely cautionary tale filled with pride, hope, and respect for the land and its history."" -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) ""Rebanks' lifetime spent farming gives this book its credibility; his sensible tone gives it its power. And his eloquence describing his beloved farm gives it its beauty."" -- Minneapolis Star Tribune ""Part lament, part manifesto, this book does what most critical books about agriculture fail to accomplish--it acknowledges the value of nature and provides a convincing argument that humans have a necessary role in it--only, however, if we are enduring enough to stay, and pay attention, and live quietly within our means, season after unpredictable season."" -- Orion Magazine ""This intimate and moving book is timely and relatable. ... With a critical and curious eye, he asks of himself--and society at large--what does it mean to be a ""good"" farmer?"" -- Civil Eats ""Superbly written and deeply insightful, the book captivates the reader until the journey's end. ... Pastoral Song is a lament for lost traditions, a celebration of a way of living and a reminder that nature is 'finite and breakable.' Mr. Rebanks hits all the right notes and deserves to be heard."" -- Wall Street Journal, Best of the Month ""Rebanks set about to bring back a way of life that's uncommon in his rural English countryside, and by the time you get to his final chapter, you'll wish you were there. Pastoral Song is a lushly meditative and wonderful story that's perfect for any farmer and every wanna-be with a dream."" -- Yankton Daily Press ""A lovely and enlightening book."" -- Minneapolis Star Tribune ""Rebanks has a gift for capturing both the allure of his beautiful surroundings and his difficult work, and for articulating the complex, worrisome issues facing farmers today. Pastoral Song enchants. ... Urgently conveys how the drive for cheap, mass-produced food has impoverished both small farmers and the soil, threatening humanity's future."" -- NPR.org, What We're Excited to Read Next Month ""Rebanks offers a sensible way to think about food and the planet. ... His prose will transport readers, introducing them to both the harsh realities and the joys of everyday life on a piece of land that has deep, personal meaning."" -- Christian Science Monitor, Best of the Month ""Pastoral Song is a wonder of a book, fierce, tender, and beautiful. Deeply personal but also global in significance, its pages course with love and concern so palpable I more than once wept while reading it. James Rebanks writes lyrically and passionately of the shadow that has fallen over our relationship with land, and how we might reconfigure the ways we think about it, relate to it, interact with it, and with each other. It's both a sobering, urgent read and a deeply inspiring, hopeful one. The book, and author, are to be treasured."" -- Helen Macdonald, New York Times bestselling author of H is for Hawk ""Rebanks, who runs a family-owned farm in England's Lake District and wrote the 2015 bestseller The Shepherd's Life, waxes lyrically about his bucolic surroundings while also delivering an eloquent treatise on the problems of modern agriculture."" -- Washington Post

""In these 285 thoughtful, beautifully written pages, James Rebanks shows, better than anything I've read recently, the precise quality of the catastrophe befalling the natural world and also what we might begin to do about it. Humane, beautifully paced, gentle, and strangely compelling, The Place of Tides feels like, not only a modern classic, but one we very much need right."" -- George Saunders ""A quietly profound book. It is a story about a still-essential way of living in the modern world and finding a way to keep going. It is also a deft travelogue to one of the world's wildest seascapes. . . . [Rebanks's] assured narrative paints a picture of a wondrous world. It is one that few of us will ever visit but are all the better for knowing about."" -- The Sunday Times ""The Place of Tides is a magical book, at once a lament for a world in danger of disappearing, and a celebration of an indomitable spirit determined to preserve it. James Rebanks has written a quiet yet ringing masterpiece."" -- John Banville ""A beautiful book about the lives we think we're going to lead versus the lives we actually live."" -- Paula Hawkins ""A magnificent book - wonderfully unlike any other . . . The Place of Tides is big-hearted and transporting, a quietly gripping reckoning with self-sufficiency and interdependence, with the lives that make us and the lives that we make."" -- Philip Gourevitch ""James Rebanks has done a miraculous thing. He takes the reader with him to a stark, remote island on the strangest mission in the toughest circumstances and makes you feel like you're coming home. A profound, transformative, uplifting story."" -- Isabella Tree ""Lyrical and enchanting . . . Rebanks is an extraordinary writer, and The Place of Tides will linger in the mind for a long time."" -- The Telegraph ""[An] enchanting book . . . [Rebanks] writes of his season with the duck women with elegance, acuity and a rare tenderness."" -- The Times Literary Supplement ""An elegiac tale . . . It is a book of stillness, quiet, vigilance, and the kind of patience that is measured not in hours but in lifetimes."" -- FT ""I love this book. It has deepened my world considerably, feathered my spiritual nest."" -- Rachel Kushner The Place of Tides is all that I want from a story: poetic, true, and full of feeling."" -- Marcus Mumford, lead singer of Mumford & Sons ""In honed prose akin to that of Hemingway, Rebanks weaves a quietly captivating fable about what it means to be true to your roots and your longing to save a dying world."" -- Sydney Morning Herald ""A fable-like tale, as beautiful and elusive as the idea of home and self it seeks to recover."" -- Richard Flanagan, Booker Prize-winning author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North ""A transfixing, tender, and open-hearted account of a spring spent with two remarkable people ... Rebanks captures nature's exquisiteness [and] quietly captivates the human heart. . . . It is a beautiful journey."" -- Irish Times ""A profound reflection on the natural world."" -- Evening Standard (London) ""An extraordinary story, gently told. This was just the book I needed."" -- Nigel Slater, author of A Thousand Feasts ""A spellbinding story of wildness, healing, and nature. A message we all need to hear, told with immense honesty and vulnerability. Magical!"" -- Julius Roberts, author of The Farm Table ""A charismatic portrait of fidelity and the true meaning of home."" -- Nick Offerman ""Surprisingly gripping . . . Rebanks excels at describing the raw beauty of the island."" -- Daily Mail (UK) ""Unfolding like a Nordic Decameron, this is a book for a wide readership, with spare prose . . . It is a book of bitten beauty, full of keen observations, and, for all its reverence, it is one of reckoning. On the cusp of the Arctic, during a magical harvest, a single-minded farmer is forced to face his own demons."" -- Country Life ""Rebanks's telling of the skilled work and cultural history that he learns from Anna Måsøy is all this otherwise enlightening book needs.'"" -- Observer ""Rebanks is an extraordinary writer, and The Place of Tides will linger in the mind for a long time."" -- Sunday Telegraph ""Deceptively simple, emotionally surprising, beautiful, and true."" -- Melissa Harrison ""A love letter to the quiet and complex majesty of a little-known landscape and the women that tirelessly tend to it. It moved, humbled and educated me and made a place I have never set my eyes on suddenly vivid and close."" -- Vanessa Kisuule ""The Place of Tides is terrific - so honest and strange. It's somehow about eider ducks, middle age, one woman's breathtaking skill and determination, the collapse of the natural order and everything in between. I think it's Rebanks's best book yet."" -- Sam Knight ""In this soulful account, Rebanks reflects on working alongside one of the last traditional 'duck women, ' who care for eider ducks during nesting season, on Norway's Vega Archipelago. . . . A wistful depiction of a vanishing way of life, this will move readers."" -- Publishers Weekly

Author Information

James Rebanks is a farmer based in the Lake District, where his family have lived and worked for over six hundred years. A graduate of Oxford University, James is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Shepherd's Life, and Pastoral Song.

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