Beautiful' Press Association'An astounding memoir' Gay Star News'Hidden Nature is one of the most thrilling things I've read in a long time' Waterways World'She writes wonderfully about the species that have carved out a place for themselves amid the discarded shopping trolleys, condom packets and industrial waste' Guardian'This candid book is as much about mapping the heart as it is about mapping the paths of waterways. As a child, she dreamed of becoming an ‘adventurer’: ‘I learnt to climb rock faces, to abseil into caves, to swim long distances in cold water, to sail small boats and surf makeshift rafts.'Fowler's moving memoir charts her experience of coming out as a gay woman, alongside her journey through Birmingham's canal networks, mapping both the waterways and the travails of her heart.' Observer'An emotional and compelling memoir, that left me inspired, both by her bravery in transforming her life, and by the unexpected beauty she finds along the way' Countryfile Magazine'Fowler beautifully exposes her emotional fragility while also celebrating the unloved nature of buddleia, herons and even the water rats who take refuge among the locks.' i paper'Fowler captures the beauty of the canal's dishevelled, neglected condition.' Times Literary Supplement'Thoughtful and heartbreakingly honest.
Much later, in 2011, Iain Sinclair (along with film-maker Andrew Kötting) paddled a giant fibreglass swan from Hastings to Hackney, with a nod to Twain: ‘It’s either Moby Dick or Huckleberry Finn … a comedic river excursion a deranged Lear-like quest with a demonic entity that you have to chase down and kill.’ Or, if you’re really unlucky, it’s both at the same time.Īlys Fowler embarks on her ‘voyage of discovery’ in response to a prevailing sense of unease. Mark Twain and Jerome K Jerome joyfully parodied the genre in, respectively, The Innocents Abroad (1869) and Three Men in a Boat (1889) Twain also composed the ultimate river quest, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). In Waterlog (1999) Roger Deakin attempted to swim across Britain’s seas, rivers, lakes, pools and canals. An atemporal and partial survey might include Travels in West Africa (1897) by Mary H Kingsley, describing (among other things) her journeys by canoe through colonial Gabon, or Raven’s Exile: A Season on the Green River (1994) by the American nature writer Ellen Meloy. To clarify before we begin, this rough category denotes memoirs by humans who have travelled on water, rather than poignant cris de coeur by literary fish.
The aquatic memoir has a rich and varied history.
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