throughout. And don’t even think about Google Maps – a brickish guidebook is among the items she stuffs into her vastly overladen backpack. An acclaimed novelist and
short story writer, Strayed certainly brings those skills to bear here. Wild is richly, if occasionally somewhat gnomically, descriptive, and never less than assiduously plotted. Her account of the journey itself is laced with plenty of reversals of fortune and page-turning drama. And she is no prude when it comes to four-letter words: deploying them liberally, she convincingly relays, ripped- out toenail by ripped-out toenail, the sheer discomfort that accompanied her immense feat of physical and mental endurance. (The enthusiasm with which she greets a familiar Stevie Ray Vaughan track is something of a marker of how weak and dislocated from civilisation she feels at one point.) But the narrative is as much about the life she is leaving behind as where she is going – though ultimately the story is really about how Strayed became the person
London Bridge in America by Travis Elborough Jonathan Cape HB Out February This is the true story of how in 1968 oil magnate Robert P. McCulloch
bought London Bridge in order to make it the focus of his Arizona resort town Lake Havasu City, then diverted a river to flow under it. But London Bridge in America
that she is today. For each blistered footstep forward in muscle-cramped agony, we take one or two steps back into the events that compelled her to begin this life-changing odyssey. Sometimes these
reminiscences slip into blunt dissections of friends, lovers and family members adjudged to have failed her – a sequence involving a numbered meditation on the mistakes her late mother made seems quite obviously lifted wholesale from a grief counselling session. Fourth, for example, in this catalogue of misdeeds is: ‘She said it was perfectly okay… if we wanted to call her by her first name.’ Which hardly seems a hanging offence, nor especially unusual among parents of her generation. Nevertheless, few writers
have tackled the unruly pain of their own loss so frankly, nor conveyed the difficulties of mastering the American wilderness as grippingly.
Reviewed by Travis Elborough, whose London Bridge in America is reviewed below
also explains how controlling the crossing of the Thames gave power to certain guilds and professions. As a piece of social commentary, it uses London Bridge to highlight the different ways each side of the Atlantic views and handles situations. It’s a quirkily written book with plenty of unusual facts. Some of the cultural observations are very much the author’s own views, giving the reader plenty of food for thought.
Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets by Jessica Fox
Short Books HB/EB Out now This memoir tells the story of an ambitious filmmaker who leaves her job with NASA to
follow her dream, leading her to a bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland (population 1,000). She finds love in the shape of the bookshop owner she meets online – but his British reserve baffles her, and he struggles to adapt to her Americanisms. Jessica Fox tends to take herself a little too seriously at times, but her culture clash tale is amusing and full of sharp observations. And you’ll find out the three things you need to know about rockets.
Absolutely Barking by Michele Hanson S&S PB/EB Out February If all you know about dogs is which end barks, you need this book. This whistle-stop
tour of ‘Dog World’ and its inhabitants has chapters on all things dog – from training to grooming via health and a cookery section complete with recipes. Michele Hanson’s passion for her subject is evident on every page, yet she doesn’t shy away from the darker side of the dog fraternity. The page-turning writing is as brisk as walkies on a cold morning. A guaranteed winner for any dog-lover, this book is highly recommended
for anyone considering dog ownership.
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What Has Nature Ever Done for Us? by Tony Juniper Profile PB/EB Out now Written by environmental campaigner and sustainability adviser Tony Juniper, What
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Has Nature Ever Done for Us? is a hard-hitting study into the economics behind the natural world. Juniper doesn’t pull any punches as he quantifies the financial impact of nature on the world economy – from the cost of pollution to the figures behind industrial dependency on natural resources and the long-term impact of quick fixes and negligence. A current, eye-opening analysis of the close relationship between GDP and nature which argues that environmental sustainability leads to economic growth. DF
Mastermind by Maria Konnikova Canongate HB/EB Out now Russian-born Harvard graduate Maria Konnikova uses Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic
detective stories as a template for exploring the concept of the ‘brain attic’ – how we can structure our brains and process certain memories to enhance mindful thinking, thereby positioning us in a ‘System Holmes’ mentality rather than our default ‘System Watson’ cerebral setting. Positioned somewhat