Spring Rain

£16.95

Out of Print
Spring Rain Author: Format: Hardback First Published: Published By: Vintage Publishing
string(3) "240"
Pages: 240 Language: English ISBN: 9781787303317 Categories: , ,

A wise and life-affirming memoir about the significance of gardens from childhood to old age, and how nature can help us heal. In Spring Rain writer and gardener, Marc Hamer, now in his sixties, shares his path to contentment from difficult beginnings. Through the prism of family gardens, he reflects on how we reconcile our childhoods with where we end up as adults. Growing up in a violent home, as a young boy Marc found solace and safety in his small back garden. In particular, in its shed, where he stumbled across an incomplete set of old encylopaedias. These books, and observing the plants and insects in his private kingdom, began his lifelong love of learning and openness to the world. Throughout his journey from youth to age, which included a period living homeless in the countryside, Marc has found the answers to life’s questions in the nature around him. While building his ‘final’ garden at his home in Cardiff, he looks back at what he has learned along the way, from his days as a child watching ants, to his later life as a professional gardener creating places of calm and restoration for others. This beautiful, moving memoir, with line drawings by the author, encourages us back in tune with the natural world and offers both consolation and a guide to a happier life. PRAISE FOR MARC HAMER: ‘This is a wonderful book about our relationship with the earth, with other animals and with our own troubled humanity. It has taught me a lot. I feel great love for it.’ Max Porter ‘A fascinating, lyrical account of the loneliness and beauty of life on the margins, a memoir of vagrancy’ Times Literary Supplement ‘Hamer lets us in; we learn what his tools feel like in hands hardened by decades of manual labour…But it is also an unlikely love story.’ Telegraph ‘A wholly original, semi-autobiographical book on how to live, how to be calm and content with only a little, in a quietly humming garden’ Daily Mail

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A memoir infused with wisdom and a deep love of nature, as well as a how-to book for finding peace of mind * Saga * Hamer's prose proceeds by association and by charismatic detail... but it also has a strong sense of arc, of change...He has an inclination to celebrate and express love-an inclination that seems built out of the humus of a difficult childhood...he is not an Adam cast out of the garden but "a boy cast out of hell," and into a series of gardens. * New Yorker * An illuminating, powerful read * Woman's Own * Marc Hamer knows how to live - simply, sparely, reverently, abundantly. Spring Rain is a tonic for the soul. * Sy Montgomery, author of How to Be A Good Creature * Interwoven with the writer's deep-seated love of the natural world... I highlighted many passages while reading this book * Countryman * A breathtaking narrative that transcends genre and geography. * Shelf Awareness * * Hamer explains why a garden is not just a place of work - it's also a place of worship. -- Margaret Roach * New York Times * Mr. Hamer has found his ideal calling in this book stitched together from small essays, a genre in which such capricious mutability of opinion is not only tolerated but encouraged. Through his words, we connect with the ultimate text, the landscape itself. * Wall Street Journal * Hamer's signature prose, rich with precise, detailed observations that evoke the luminous wonder that informs and illuminates all being, is on full display * Vancouver Sun * A book of great but tender power; acute, wise and intimately observed, speaking with the unmistakable voice of the land itself - which is equally unmistakably Hamer's own. And what a voice that is! -- Charles Foster, author of Cry of the Wild