Nature Cure

Product Details

Author : Richard Mabey
Binding : Paperback
EAN : 9781844130962
Edition : New Ed
Number of Pages : 240
Product Group : Book
Publication Date : 2006-04-06
Publisher : Pimlico
Release Date : 2006-04-06

ASIN : 1844130967

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Editorial Reviews

The Independent, 31 March 06

Enthralling musings on the profound importance of the natural world.

Independent

"enthralling musings on the profound importance of the natural world…"

Ross Leckie, Saturday Times, 8 April 2006

This book is rich in lore and learning…fecund, fertile and full of hope.

Nicholas Bagnall, Sunday Telegraph

‘An inspiring book’

Ross Leckie, The Times

‘This book is rich in lore and learning…fecund, fertile and full of hope.’

The Guardian

'A beautifully written memoir'

The Independent

`An inspiring read'

Synopsis

In the last year of the old millennium, Richard Mabey, Britain's foremost nature writer, fell into a severe depression. For two years, he did little more than lie in bed with his face to a wall. He could neither work nor play. His money ran out. Worst of all, the natural world - which since childhood had been a source of joy and inspiration for him - became meaningless. Then, cared for by friends, he gradually recovered. He fell in love. Out of necessity as much as choice he moved to East Anglia. And he started to write again. This remarkable book is an account of that first year of a new life. It is the story of a rite of passage - from sickness into health, from retreat into curiosity. It is about the adventure of learning to fit again. Having left the cosseting woods of the Chiltern hills for the open flatlands of Norfolk, Richard Mabey finds exhilaration in discovering a whole new landscape. He writes about the changing seasons in prose so exact and so beautiful that every sentence delights the reader. But "Nature Cure" is also a larger story. In finding his own niche, Richard Mabey gained insights into our human place in nature.He reflects on the inherent value of all creatures; on our presumptions that mankind is superior; on the ancient morality of common land; and above all on the role of the imagination - not as a barrier between us and nature, but as our best way back to it. This was his 'nature cure': not a passive submission to nature, but an active, sensual re-engagement. Structured as intricately as a novel, a joy to read, truthful, exquisite and questing, "Nature Cure" is a book of hope, not just for individuals, but for our species.

From the Publisher

'Britain's greatest living nature writer' (The Times) describes how he conquered clinical depression through his re-awakened love of nature.

About the Author

Richard Mabey:
Richard Mabey is the author of the bestselling, award-winning and ground-breaking FLORA BRITANNICA (which sold nearly 90,000 at -35), as well as many highly praised books about nature and the environment, including FOOD FOR FREE and THE UNOFFICIAL COUNTRYSIDE. His book about Gilbert White won the Whitbread Biography of the Year.

Customer Reviews

Doesn't 'do what it says on the tin' (2008-01-23)

I really wanted to love this book. Depression is a vile, destructive thing, and also something of a mystery, and any tale of its defeat should be both inspiring and informative. Add to this the location, the East Anglian countryside, this book looked (to me) irresistible. And then there were all the fulsome comments from national newspapers on the cover...However, in the end I was disappointed. I learnt little about depression, its causes and cures - or about the real inner life of the author. I got little sense of the horror of depression at the start, of an eventful and bumpy journey in the middle, of any interest in the psychological forces at work as we travelled, or of a real cure at the end.Behind a veil of lyricism, the author is really rather reticent. For example, part of his healing process came via a relationship, but we are offered no insight into this at all - no doubt tactful to the lady involved, but it makes dull reading.Of course, there are good things about this book. Mabey writes with poetry and elegance about the environment, and his love of nature shines through (`It was the kind of day that makes one feel like saying grace for a blade of grass'). Were it marketed as a series of essays on rural life, ecology etc., or just a literary diary of a year in rural East Anglia, it would be very pleasant. But it purports to be something more, and to me it does not deliver on this promise.

A marmite - Love it or hate it!! (2007-05-21)

There is no denying that Richard Mabey is a talented author and naturalist, so its no surprise that the combination of these two qualities produce a book that is both eloquent and imaginative, and will for some people be the epitome of what a thought-provoking 'nature book' should be.However I was first introduced to Nature Cure through Mabey's column in BBC Wildlife of the same name, and found it to be not only pessimistic but also somewhat dismissive of efforts to aid the natural world. So upon embarking on the book I was prepared for much more of the same, and I wasn't disappointed.From the word go Mabey seems intent on reminding us of what we have lost rather than what we still have and what it can do for us. Although he describes swift sightings and deer encounters with heart-warming enthusiasm, it is always followed by a lengthy account of how out of tune we have become with nature, or a depressing metaphor for mankind's fall from grace!Even the title is somewhat misleading. I expected the theme of Nature Cure to be a description of how the power of the natural world helped Mabey overcome depression. However it begins with Mabey already recovered, with barely a glimpse back into his life before recovery. As such the book meanders its way through what can only be described as a rather uneventful 'recuperation' period. Mabey's talent for describing natural events kept me interested enough to see it through to the end but it did become a chore and left me far from inspired.There are some people who will find the book wonderful. There are beautiful descriptions and evocative thoughts which will make the more romantic nature lover's day. But for the more practical wildlife enthusiasts (like me) who like to learn and experience, it was rather disappointing.For me Nature Cure was not an exhilarating literary venture in the way Mabey's Flora Britannica was, but it is something a little different, and for that reason is both refreshing and worth a try.

Ignore the title, just enjoy the contents (2006-08-15)

You can imagine the scene. One of Britains most respected and brilliant nature writers having recovered from a bout of severe depression turns up for a meeting with his publishers with his latest work. "How are we going to market this book, Richard? What title shall we give it?" Nature Cure. But, despite the fact that this book is up to Richards usual high standard, there's precious little on how he came back from the brink and the part that reconnecting with nature played. And this is the real disappointment. Much has been done and written in the scientific community, for example by Professor Roger Ulrich amongst others, on the effects of exposure to the natural world on patients. But this is dry academic stuff and I was really hoping that someone with Richards power of prose could present a more cogent and lucid understanding of the role nature can play in restoring the mind. If that publishers conference had decided that this was really a book about upping sticks from your home in the Chilterns and moving to and re-discovering the East Anglian landscape then I expect it wouldn't have been so attractive or compelling even if it was more honest. So ignore the title, don't have too many expectations and just enjoy Richards evocative writing. I certainly did.

Courageous and thought provoking (2005-12-07)

I enjoyed this book immensely. The author's emotional and physical journey from one beloved and known landscape, through pain and loss, to the renewing strength of another quite different place, is expressed with courage and a disarming honesty that utterly convinces.I learnt much from the author's thought-provoking meditations on nature and even more about what it is to be human. Thank you Richard Mabey!

Disappointing (2005-11-07)

The author is a repected naturalist and nature writer of long standing, so maybe I should have guessed in advance that this book would not quite offer what the title and blurb seemed (to me) to promise. I was hoping that this would be a story of the revelatory/restorative powers of discovering and/or reconnecting with nature, even if all that is meant by that is getting more in touch with the British countryside. What I read was instead a rather mundane account of one person's descent into depression and subsequent recovery, where that person just happened to have the rather agreeable job of spending all his time thinking and writing about the natural world, and reading (and citing, extensively) the works of other authors' accounts of nature in prose and in poetry.

In a nutshell, this is an introspective autobiographical fragment that can reasonably be summarised as "bloke who spends all his time thinking and writing about nature gets depressed; spends some time being depressed; eventually stops being depressed and gets back into thinking and writing about nature" -- to me, it's really not a particularly compelling tale. If it had been "urban bloke who works in factory/office and spends no time in countryside gets depressed; discovers nature; is lifted from depression by new-found love of nature; finds new meaning to life, etc" then it would be; but as it is, the caricature/precis of this book can be shortened to "bloke has a job; bloke gets depressed and can't work; bloke gets better and goes back to old job". Oh, and he moves house too.

The publicity for this book (see the Synopsis on Amazon) makes a deal of the fact that Mabey "...found the courage..." to move home from the Chilterns (where he had lived in the house of his parents from his birth right through to his middle-age) to East Anglia, where the countryside is a bit different. While reading this book, I found it hard to avoid the conclusion that Mr Mabey seems to live a somewhat other-worldly Gentleman Naturalist lifestyle of a type that I thought had fallen into extinction sometime in the first quarter of the 20th Century. Frankly, if you want to read a tale of courage, odds-overcome, and depression defeated, then there are countless much better ones than this. And if you want to read a book on the joys of nature/countryside/wilderness, there are also very many better books to choose from. So, I can't think who would benefit from being recommended this book. Maybe this would be interesting to someone who could be filled with wonder admiration and awe at the thought of a person moving their home from Chiltern countryside eastward by a couple of hundred miles to the flat fens of Norfolk and then noticing the differences; but maybe not.

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