Micro Review 37

 

Light Rains Sometimes Fall by Lev Parikian (Elliot & Thompson Ltd)

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I think that I'll be taking a break from nature writing books soon, you can have too much of a good thing after all.

If this is the last one I do read for a while then I've gone out on a real high. I loved Into the Tangled Bank which was longlisted for the Wainright prize but I think if anything I loved this one more!

Taking inspiration from the Japanese, who split the 4 main seasons in to 72 smaller seasons, Parikian stays very local and looks at his 'patch' as the seasons roll on. It helps that 2020 was the year picked for this scrutiny of the micro seasons as we all had to stay local for so much of the year and charting the small, incremental changes was easier.

I think that this book was such a delight for me as our regular stomping ground over the past year has also been a large, urban cemetery and so many of Parikian's sightings matched our own it was a little like I'd kept a better diary of last year.

The micro seasons also make so much more sense, especially in seasons like spring and autumn which differ so much from the start to the end. These small chapters also made me look back at my Twitter and Instagram feeds to see if our sightings matched those written about. The one thing I am slightly jealous of are Parikian's fox sightings - as yet that is one mammal we've not seen.

I really hope that this makes next year's Wainwright Prize, it is a brilliant addition to the nature writing canon as well as an incredibly good memoir to 2020/2021 when we all discovered our local patch and wildlife.