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Belonging

Natural histories of place, identity and home

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Belonging

By: Amanda Thomson
Narrated by: Lois Chimimba
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING 2023
LONGLISTED FOR THE KAVYA PRIZE 2024
LONGLISTED FOR THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE 2022

Reflecting on family, identity and nature, belonging is a personal memoir about what it is to have and make a home. It is a love letter to nature, especially the northern landscapes of Scotland and the Scots pinewoods of Abernethy.

Beautifully written and featuring Amanda Thomson's artwork and photography throughout, it explores how place, language and family shape us and make us who we are. It is a book about how we are held in thrall to elements of our past. It speaks to the importance of attention and reflection, and will encourage us all to look and observe and ask questions of ourselves.

 Biological Sciences Botany & Plants Ecology Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Relationships Science Scotland
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Critic reviews

"Outstanding" (ROBERT MACFARLANE)
"A beautifully written meditation on rural surroundings and her place within them"
"Amanda Thomson’s new book manages to carve out a distinctive niche for itself . . . This is a passionate book and infused with a sense of rootedness" (STUART KELLY)
"In recent years rural landscapes have turned into battlegrounds, and nature writing has become increasingly polemical. Belonging is a quiet book of questions in a genre full of answers, but it is all the more powerful and beautiful for this" (PATRICK GALBRAITH)
"Deservedly shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize; a thoughtful blend of memoir, family history, artistic scrapbook and nature journal in a compelling collage. [ . . . ] There’s also an all-encompassing belief in the importance of listening, looking and learning from the world around us"
"One of the best things I have read in ages . . . Quiet and beautiful and powerful" (ALYS FOWLER)
"Thomson writes of the natural in a way I have yet to encounter before. There is no real hoo-haa, no flowery description of which to speak yet somehow, I came away with that ache inside me — that renewed obsession with the world that is only borne of a very particular kind of writing — poetic, loving, raw . . . Like no other" (KERRI Ní DOCHARTAIGH)
"I rather enjoyed Amanda's very personal history interweaving ideas of family, place, history and nature. I was left feeling that she is the sort of person that I would love to spend an evening engaged in conversation with" (DAVID LINDO, The Urban Birder)
"Whether writing about nature, about family, about art, or about identity, Amanda Thomson brings a careful and a thoughtful attention to the page. She shows how the threads of a life – its passions and preoccupations – are intricately entangled, each illuminating and complicating the other" (MALACHY TALLACK)
"A book that digs deep . . . Vivid"
All stars
Most relevant
A fascinating and original memoir and evocation of the natural world. The narrator was disappointing - I would have liked to hear it in the author’s own voice.

Beguiling

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Just a fantastic book by Amanda Thomson, author of The Scots Dictionary of Nature. A personal memoir and a loving letter to nature, family and identity. This is a beautifully reflective book and makes me want to sit in nature and take stock. It has come to me when I am also thinking about what makes my home. I'm so grateful for these words.
I absolutely love the Scots definitions related to weather and seasons at the start of each chapter.


Lois Chimimba is a delightful narrator, the words are alive in her (but I wish she hadn't continued to mis-pronounced Norman MacCaig's name throughout)

Layer upon layer of belonging explored

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A beautiful ode to Scotland, it’s natural history and vocabulary, given a fresh perspective by an author of colour.

An Ode to Scotland

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