In this touching and contemplative climbing memoir, Mort reflects on risk-taking, freedom and our relationship to the natural world through the lens of motherhood.
Climbing gives you the illusion of being in control, just for a while, the tantalising sense of being able to stay one move ahead of death.
Helen Mort has always been drawn to the thrill and risk of climbing: the tension between human and rockface, and the climber's powerful connection to the elemental world. But when she becomes a mother for the first time, she finds herself re-examining her relationship with both the natural world and herself, as well as the way the world views women who aren't afraid to take risks.
A Line Above the Sky melds memoir and nature writing to ask why humans are drawn to danger, and how we can find freedom in pushing our limits. It is a visceral love letter to losing oneself in physicality, whether climbing a mountain or bringing a child into the world, and an unforgettable celebration of womanhood in all its forms.
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
ISBN: 9781529107784
Number of pages: 288
Weight: 397 g
Dimensions: 225 x 145 x 27 mm
A gorgeous memoir all about the great outdoors and the impulse to go to our limits - Evening Standard
This is a wonderful book - exhilarating and taut, fearless in its explorations of wildness, risk, motherhood, and the inner and outer worlds of the writer. It will make you want to get out into the mountains, and to get back home in one piece. A triumph. - Jon McGregor
This book is beautiful. I could read Helen Mort all day long...The book sang to me on many levels. It's spirited, visceral, earthy, defiant...A book I will re-read, and talk about, and pass on. - Emma Jane Unsworth
An intimate take on motherhood and self-dissolution, and the way mountains can come to fill the voids of a life - Economist
Strong stuff, satisfying and intriguing to read - Sarah Moss, Irish Times
Deeply moving - New Statesman
This is a book of the seen and unseen; on being alive; on being wild; on being a woman. This book is about being a woman - both seen and unseen - alive and wild - in a world that needs new words for every single part of this. And my oh my, how Mort writes those new words. - Caught by the River
A candid and moving exploration of early motherhood...the writing is beautifully lyrical - Sophie Windgate, The I
As an admirer of Helen Mort’s work for many years, this memoir was highly anticipated. Mort has a beautiful way with words and is a writer particularly gifted when writing about the outdoors, nature and the thrill of... More
I have read a lot of books that I feel have been written from the heart but this book is more than that. Helen Mort has spilled her heart right out onto the page and has done so using elegant, emotive, almost perfect... More
'French Braid' is another stunning novel from Anne Tyler which explores the lives of the Garrett family from different perspectives from the 1950s right up to the present. The novel starts in 2010 with a... More
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