"A beautifully thoughtful book, in equal parts memoir, a love letter to our countryside, and examination of what the future holds for rural life."
What a lovely read this is, so thoughtful and moving, yet also challenging and provocative too. Rural has deservedly been chosen as a LoveReading Star Book. Author Rebecca Smith looks at the history and future of those born, bred, and working in the countryside. This isn’t just a surface picture of rural life, it deep-dives into this world, and shows an element that most won’t have seen or even understand. At first I felt as though she was slightly ambivalent, sitting on a sharpened edge of awareness and I wasn’t sure where she was going to settle. The further I read, the more I realised that she holds a true love, personal and honest and pure, for the countryside. This book feels important, as though it had to be written now, and should be read by those who hold power, who make decisions. Her questions, her mourning, emphasise the reality of working in our most rural areas, this isn’t a theme-ride version, this is truth. I felt as though I was on a meandering course as I read, dipping in and out of her family, discovering history, examining the social and economic aspects of rural life. It has somehow seared itself onto my soul and I cried as I finished. Highly recommended, Rural is a very special read, one that highlights the joy and difficulties of living a working life in our countryside.
Join Rebecca Smith on the London Mountain Podcast in an insightful conversation about nature, conservation, and the human stories that connect us to the land.
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
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Starting with Rebecca Smith’s own family history – foresters in Cumbria, miners in Derbyshire, millworkers in Nottinghamshire, builders of reservoirs and the Manchester Ship Canal – Rural is an exploration of our green and pleasant land, and the people whose labour has shaped it.
Beautifully observed, these are the stories of professions and communities that often go overlooked. Smith shows the precarity for those whose lives are entangled in the natural landscape. And she traces how these rural working-class worlds have changed. As industry has transformed – mines closing, country estates shrinking, farmers struggling to make profit on a pint of milk, holiday lets increasing so relentlessly that local people can no longer live where they were born – we are led to question the legacy of the countryside in all our lives.
This is a book for anyone who loves and longs for the countryside, whose family owes something to a bygone trade, or who is interested in the future of rural Britain.
Rural features in the following genres: Biographies & Autobiographies, Non-Fiction Books of the Month, Social and cultural history, Memoirs, Rural communities, Social classes, Biography, Literature and Literary studies, Recommendations, History: specific events and topics, History, History and Archaeology, Social groups, communities and identities, Society and culture: general, Society and Social Sciences, Star Books, Nature and the natural world: general interest, Lifestyle, Hobbies and Leisure
Rural is available in Paperback, Hardback
Rural was written by Rebecca Smith and published by William Collins an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Rural has 248 pages
£9.89
