Incorporating strands of ancient myth and Middle English storytelling and told in a combination of prose-poetry and image that demands to be spoken, read-aloud and shared, two visionary writers bring to life the incipient threat posed by climate change and global development.
Eerie, unsettling and hauntingly beautiful - a new collaboration from the bestselling creators of Holloway, Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood.
Somewhere on a salt-and-shingle island, inside a ruined concrete structure known as The Green Chapel, a figure called The Armourer is leading a ritual with terrible intent. But something is coming to stop him.
Five more-than-human forms are traversing land, sea and time towards The Green Chapel, moving to the point where they will converge and become Ness. Ness has lichen skin and willow-bones. Ness is made of tidal drift, green moss and deep time. Ness has hagstones for eyes and speaks only in birds. And Ness has come to take this island back.
What happens when land comes to life? What would it take for land to need to come to life?
Using word and image, the pair have together made a minor modern myth. Part-novella, part-prose-poem, part-mystery play, in Ness their skills combine to dazzling, troubling effect.
Robert Macfarlane is the author of The Lost Words with Jackie Morris, The Old Ways and Underland. Stanley Donwood is an artist and the author of Slowly Downward, Household Worms and Bad Island.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241986370
Number of pages: 96
Weight: 99 g
Dimensions: 197 x 131 x 10 mm
Ness goes beyond what we expect books to do. Beyond poetry, beyond the word, beyond the bomb - it is an aftertime song. It is dark, ever so dark, nimble and lethal. It is a triumphant libretto of mythic modernism for our poisoned age. Ness is something else, and feels like it always has been. - Max Porter
It may only be a slight book, but it will certainly confuse, amaze and intrigue you and it may even slightly disturb you (and so it should).
Though it is short you will find yourself reading passages again and again (...
More
Ness lays bare the very real issue that while we humans have been busy destroying nature, ultimately it will be nature which destroys us. We will not win. All of our technology will be no protection against a... More
A new Robert MacFarlane is always a cause for celebration for me. Ness is something quite different though and very difficult to pin down. In fact the first time I read it, yes I have read it more than once already, I... More
Please sign in to write a review
Would you like to proceed to the App store to download the Waterstones App?
