Ghostways: Two Journeys in Unquiet Places
Description
A hauntingly beautiful diptych of works inspired by Robert Macfarlane’s travels with celebrated collaborators to two eerie corners of England.
In Holloway, "a perfect miniature prose-poem" (William Dalrymple), Macfarlane, artist Stanley Donwood, and writer Dan Richards travel to Dorset, near the south coast of England, to explore a famed "hollowed way"—a path used by walkers and riders for so many centuries that it has become worn far down into the soft golden bedrock of the region.
In Ness, "a triumphant libretto of mythic modernism for our poisoned age" (Max Porter), Macfarlane and Donwood create a modern myth about Orford Ness, the ten-mile-long shingle spit that lies off the coast of East Anglia, which the British government used for decades to conduct secret weapons tests.
Praise for Ghostways: Two Journeys in Unquiet Places
A strangely lovely book…Contemplative, impressionistic and suffused with aspects of the mythic, these pieces operate at times like prose poems….
— David L. Ulin - Los Angeles Times
These stories convey [Macfarlane’s] talent for elevating even modest wonders with sincere attention….Macfarlane approaches the natural world with humility and a deep appreciation for the spirits that haunt a landscape.
— Emily Borrow - Wall Street Journal
[A]n almost-too-fitting natural history for [2020]…Ghostways is designed to evoke more than inform, and often echoes what you bring to it…
— Genevieve Valentine - NPR
A lovely evocation of some 'spectral and unreal' elements of the British landscape.
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
