Twelve Moons: The most beautiful and inspiring memoir you’ll read

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However, latterly, I found myself increasingly irritated by certain passages of the book. The biggest thing that riled me was Giles' constant references to her ex-husband and the almost pining quality to these sections. I understand that the purpose of the book was for Giles to explore who she was in the wake of her separation. However, I believe it says that by the time the book even began, they had been separated for four years. The fact that there was still this moping, "pity me" tone to her writing made me want to scream and shake her. No woman should be so defined by her relationship with a man that four years later, she still can't bear to think of him. Perhaps this is the point, and that is what Giles is trying to step away from, but every time she brought him up it felt like the antithesis to the feminine strength and independence the book was meant to be cheerleading. Compounding this was the fact that every positive element to the book was immediately followed by some deeply morose emotion or thought that made it quite hard to read at times. It is clear from her writing that Giles is a very anxious and often deeply unhappy person, and whether it was her intention or not, this element of her character held centre stage throughout the narrative. If Little Women had been written from the perspective of Marmee March – and Marmee was undergoing a divorce in the 21st-century Northumberland countryside – then it might have read a lot like Caro Giles’ Twelve Moons. This sea-swept memoir from the winner of BBC Countryfile magazine’s 2021 New Nature Writer of the Year award documents Giles’ life as a single mother with four young girls: the Mermaid, the Whirlwind, the Caulbearer and the Littlest One. Her daughters are her main protagonists, but the writing itself, done in stolen candlelit hours over the course of a year, also becomes an act of self-care that enables Giles to nurture her children’s sense of self without losing her own. When I was a child, I didn’t know it would be possible to lose myself. No one told me how fragile that sense of self is. How, like the candles I burn every morning, it can easily be snuffed out. The most beautiful and inspiring memoir you'll read in 2023, Twelve Moons follows a year spent caught between the wild sea and the changing moon of the wide Northumberland skies. Caro Giles lives on the far edge of the country, with her tribe of daughters: The Mermaid, The Whirlwind, The Caulbearer and The Littlest One. She is at once alone and yet surrounded.

We’re very excited to welcome writer Caro Giles to celebrate the release of her debut book, Twelve Moons: A Year Under A Shared Sky.The chapters lead us through the year’s moons and their phases, which unites things cleverly - an unexpectedly grounding device. No surprise that I, a nature lover, found joy in the descriptions of the natural world. The healing qualities of the non-human are well shown here. As for the humans in this book, this is an overwhelmingly female and feminine tale. But I hope that many other men will find their way to this book, as I did. The big messages of this book - love, recovery, independence, tenacity - are important for all of us. A gorgeous, touching telling of a year of wild mothering – at the edge of place and time – but written straight from the very heart of its author’

TWELVE MOONS follows a year spent caught between the wild sea and the changing moon of the wide Northumberland skies. Addington and Ellis argue for a noble cause, but Crewe, an editor at the London Review of Books, does not allow them to be idols. They can be jealous, selfish and lustful, obsessing over intellectual arguments (the works of Walt Whitman and the ancient Greeks feature often) rather than considering how their choices will affect their loved ones. This complexity of character makes The New Life an adroit novel of ethics. “Her face injured him with its familiarity,” Crewe writes of Catherine, Addington’s wife. “‘I did not marry for this,’ she said.” TWELVE MOONS follows the lunar calendar, each chapter sharing a month and a moon, and shows the simmering power that lies in our often hidden daily lives. A dazzlingly honest memoir that while never turning away from the awkward truths of life, also shows how love will flourish if we can only find a space for ourselves.Newly published by Harper Collins, Caro Giles‘s ‘Twelve Moons’ is a story of how one person — perhaps particularly a mother — holds within their hands the power to change the world, writes Kerri ní Dochartaigh. Pegg said: “Caro’s writing wove a spell around me from the first time I read her words. An utterly captivating shared journey through a year, Twelve Moons is a deft, fierce and beautiful testament to finding your voice and your succour even in the darkest times. A story of caring, identity and the unpolished beauty and regenerative power of the natural world around us, I can’t wait to share this book – which manages the life-writing magic of being at once both deeply personal and tantalisingly universal.” There is such poetry to this book; such grace in the way Giles writes of her past; her children; her fears; her hopes. Here is a woman who knows what it means to sit with her own experiences — those that rattle us and leave us changed — and not shy away from the invitation to transformation such things carry in their wake. I feel humbled to be let in on this year of her life; a year that affected some members of our communities in ways that perhaps others were not quite aware of. Carers were placed in positions that no-one should ever have to be put in. I watched from my own position of relative ease as friends fought for the respite they so desperately needed; for even very basic support for their children; for people to simply listen to, and trust them, when it came to the small people for which they were caring day in, day out. All of this covers the time of global crisis during the pandemic. She evokes the lives of her 4 amazing daughters, The Mermaid, The Whirlwind, The Caulbearer and The Littlest One with honesty, compassion and clarity. In fact, the calm and chaos of their lives mirror the ebb and flow of the tides and the lunar cycle beautifully. The nature descriptions of landscape, sea and sky are breathtakingly realistic.