The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane
The only way I can even begin to show how beautiful this book is, is by likening it to a love letter written to the wild places of the UK. This is an exquisite collection of travels to remote and closer-to-home places across the UK. With observations layered with the etymology, cartography, natural history and history of each place.
The Book
The Wild Places is Macfarlane’s second book after Mountains of the Mind. In this book he decides to seek out the most wild places in the UK. What starts as a journey to find places as untouched by humans as possible becomes a realisation that often we live just a hedgerow away from places forgotten and untouched by humans.
As well as a memorandum of friendship, travels and the history of each place; The Wild Places is also a wake-up call about the state of our ecosystems. Not only in the UK but also further afield and the way our consumer society is affecting the land, the animals and the plants that live alongside us.
This is the perfect book for wonderers and wanderers, multi-layered with personal and more general experiences - Macfarlane takes us into the areas of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales that few of us will ever visit in-person and brings them to life.
Ratings
Readability || *****
{ Readability: is the book easy to read, does it have simple yet effective language that is accessible and does it have a good flow}
This book has language that is easy to read, structure that makes this book convenient to come back to over a period of time and images for each chapter which make it feel less intense.
Structure || *****
Each chapter covers a different area that Macfarlane goes to. They are relatively short and feel easy to digest; it also means that if you want to have this book on the go over a longer period of time it is easy to pick up and put down and come back to
Decadence || *****
This is a truly decadent book, the language, the subject matter etc.
Review Accuracy || *****
I didn’t read the essay reviews on Goodreads (because who has the time?) but the shorter reviews were very accurate to my own reading experience for The Wild Places.