276°
Posted 20 hours ago

I Can Hear the Cuckoo: Life in the Wilds of Wales

£8.495£16.99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

I gradually learned how to read it - this wasn’t my usual fare of “space opera” where one explosion leads the protagonist to deliver a stunning treatise on AI and humanity.

I eventually fell into a firm routine with this book, reading only a chapter a day or so, and savouring the insights within - just mulling them over like turning a lovely pebble in my mind’s hand - and just allowing myself to empathise and feel.Here is a tender, philosophical memoir about the beauty of a microscopic life, the value of solitariness, and respecting the rhythm and timing of the earth. Kiran Sidhu's book is a bit different as it's not solely about grief and death, although that's the underlying backstory. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Her stories of the Welsh countryside, the nature, birds, trees, animals, and the people who inhabited the small hamlet were magical. If this is representative of how disconnected the rest of the urban population is from rural life then we will never save the environment; half the population don’t actually know what it is.

It felt as if this was used as padding and could have been easily replaced by a deeper drilling down into her experiences of not only being an outsider but a woman of Indian descent in an otherwise white monoculture.

I was expecting this book would be more about the author learning to deal with her grief over the death of her mother, and whilst she of course does touch on that, the book is really about a fish out of water learning basic countryside facts, which I didn’t find particularly interesting. After Kiran loses her mother, she escapes to the Welsh countryside - to allow herself to grieve away from turbulent city life in London, to leave her toxic family behind, and to find solace in the purity of the natural world. Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages.

Sidhu doesn’t mention her Indian heritage much, apart from musing on how Indian women are often put upon wherever they are, and that she was uncomfortable with the assumption she did or should have children when she went to visit relatives there. She also takes us through the seasons with her, so there's always something new to look forward to and you really get the sense that her eyes were really opened as to what life should be about. But as the months wear on, Kiran starts to connect with the close-knit community she finds there; her neighbour Sarah, who shows her how to sledge when the winter snow arrives; Jane, a 70-year-old woman who lives at the top of a mountain with three dogs and four alpacas; and Wilf, the farmer who eats the same supper every day, and teaches Kiran that the cuckoo arrives in April and leaves in July. I don’t like reading on my tablet though I do read the Saturday newspaper on it as it saves having piles of newspaper around to recycle!

You can also only bookmark a page (in this case, sometimes it came out as a double page) rather than highlighting text, making it difficult to remember what exact bits you want to mention in your review. I thought Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking was an excellent portrayal of grief in the aftermath of death.

Reading this book I felt wrapped and held in the unfolding story,while been given the space to explore,what is being offered in relation to my own journey,side by side. She's always lived in the city, so to swap city life for rural Wales was a big step but she knew she needed something new, and after a holiday with her husband they took the plunge to move and see what life could offer them there.

I Can Hear the Cuckoo is a tender, philosophical memoir about the beauty of a microscopic life, the value of solitariness, and respecting the rhythm and timing of the earth. This is a woman who was struggling to cope with her mother's death and the family fallout so upped sticks from London to rural North Wales. I enjoyed reading this book,I am a slow reader,but with the chapters being short,it was easy to dip in and out at my own pace and perfect for a break.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment