The Living Mountain
by Nan Shepherd
Old Book of the Week , June 1, 2020
The Living Mountain
It's hard to imagine that a book this powerful sat unread in its author's drawer for thirty years. Written in the '40s and finally brought out a few years before Shepherd's death, it has since become, rightfully, one of the classics of nature writing. Shepherd lived her whole life among the Cairngorms, Scotland's most mountainous area, and her beautifully exact reflections are a result, not of conquering a mountain, but of living in and around it. Every page in this compact marvel has sentences so thought-provokingly observant you'll want to write them down, and, like the best nature writing, her writing is so selflessly attentive that it becomes a philosophy.
It's hard to imagine that a book this powerful sat unread in its author's drawer for thirty years. Written in the '40s and finally brought out a few years before Shepherd's death, it has since become, rightfully, one of the classics of nature writing. Shepherd lived her whole life among the Cairngorms, Scotland's most mountainous area, and her beautifully exact reflections are a result, not of conquering a mountain, but of living in and around it. Every page in this compact marvel has sentences so thought-provokingly observant you'll want to write them down, and, like the best nature writing, her writing is so selflessly attentive that it becomes a philosophy.
— Tom
The Living Mountain was reviewed in Newsletter #274 on June 1, 2020. For more like this, and other bookish news, sign up for the newsletter .
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