A Year's Turning
A Year's Turning
by Michael Viney
One of the greatest works of Irish nature writing and personal memoir, by one of Ireland’s greatest writers.
9781848408548 | September 2022 | €19.95 | Hardback | 256pp
A Year’s Turning is one of Ireland’s greatest works of nature writing and nature memoir, in the tradition of writers such as Tim Robinson and Robert Macfarlane. Michael Viney and his wife Ethna lived in the city, had successful jobs in the media and had just turned forty when they made a lifechanging decision: to give up everything for a self-reliant existence on a remote cottage farm in County Mayo, on the West Coast of Ireland. This enchanting chronicle of life on the land follows the highs and lows of one year in the Irish countryside, charting the minutiae of the natural world – the sowing of potatoes, the peculiar habits of sea otters - and the grand systems of the wild, like the astonishing migrations of wild geese or the inexplicable beaching of rare whales. Since moving to their home at Thallabawn, Michael Viney’s weekly columns in The Irish Times have run for sixty years, and established his reputation as a uniquely compassionate and informed commentator on the natural world, and undoubtedly one of Ireland’s greatest nature writers.
MICHAEL VINEY, born in 1933, led a successful career in Irish journalism and television until 1977, when he left behind city life and moved with his wife Ethna and daughter Michele to a one-acre smallholding at Thallabawn, near Louisburgh, on the south-west coast of Mayo. Ventures in 'alternative' living nourished his growing interest in the natural world. He continued writing and went to become of Ireland's foremost nature writers, with a long-running weekly column, Another Life, in The Irish Times, published with his own illustrations. Among his books have been Ireland in the natural history series of the Smithsonian Institution, and Ireland’s Ocean written with his wife Ethna. He has been elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy and awarded an honorary degree in literature by Trinity College, Dublin.
“‘First published over a quarter of a century ago, A Year’s Turning is the best kind of classic, still fresh and relevant. It is the most exquisitely written book I have encountered in years; I have read passages over and over again for the delight of their music and rhythm. Yet, Michael Viney is modest and honest: he never over-eggs or shows off. He writes with love, humour and humility so compellingly that you are with him every tentative step: examining the teeth of a beached whale corpse, cack-handedly sharpening a scythe, watching a cruel gale “lifting slates one by one, like crows flying up from a stubble-field.”
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“‘Viney offers us a masterclass in observing and writing about the wonders of our island home, and sets out a path towards living a richer, more rewarding life.
A Year’s Turning is a testament to a life less ordinary, a remarkable immersion in the wilds of County Mayo, and how it enriched the lives of Viney and his family. Each page is an education in itself – an invitation, or invocation, to immerse ourselves more deeply in life and the land.
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“A book to live by.”
