Amy Jeff's second book is an exploration of wilderness and solitude, as seen in old Medieval texts. Jeff retells some of these stories whilst taking creative liberties with their themes and narratives. Each of the seven chapters: Earth, Fen, Forest, Beast, Ocean, Catastrophe and Paradise begin with a tale, followed by a more scholarly essay and personal reflections. Each chapter is accompanied by a woodcut engraving. Unfortunately I found the whole thing too dry and academic for my liking. Although the book is short, it took me a month to read because I was not engaged. The stories are deliberately nebulous and obscure. At times it felt like a modern agenda was being pushed into the narrative, particularly in Beast.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with her research, in fact, it was obvious that Jeffs had spent a lot of time poring over the Franks Casket in the British Museum and other artefacts and manuscripts, but I felt like there was no substance to it. I didn't really learn anything about the landscape or people of the past, it was all poetic, wishy-washy fluff with some personal anecdotes thrown in. I don't want to disparage Amy, she seems like a nice person, the book was just not what I was expecting at all. I wanted something more informative and factual - a natural history, as it were. Perhaps the title itself was somewhat misleading.
Rating: 2/5
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