Enthralling musings on the profound importance of the natural world.

"enthralling musings on the profound importance of the natural world?"

This book is rich in lore and learning?fecund, fertile and full of hope.

?An inspiring book?

?This book is rich in lore and learning?fecund, fertile and full of hope.?

'A beautifully written memoir'

`An inspiring read'

In the last year of the old millennium, Richard Mabey, Britain's foremost nature writer, fell into a severe depression. For two years, he did little more than lie in bed with his face to a wall. He could neither work nor play. His money ran out. Worst of all, the natural world - which since childhood had been a source of joy and inspiration for him - became meaningless. Then, cared for by friends, he gradually recovered. He fell in love. Out of necessity as much as choice he moved to East Anglia. And he started to write again. This remarkable book is an account of that first year of a new life. It is the story of a rite of passage - from sickness into health, from retreat into curiosity. It is about the adventure of learning to fit again. Having left the cosseting woods of the Chiltern hills for the open flatlands of Norfolk, Richard Mabey finds exhilaration in discovering a whole new landscape. He writes about the changing seasons in prose so exact and so beautiful that every sentence delights the reader. But "Nature Cure" is also a larger story. In finding his own niche, Richard Mabey gained insights into our human place in nature.

He reflects on the inherent value of all creatures; on our presumptions that mankind is superior; on the ancient morality of common land; and above all on the role of the imagination - not as a barrier between us and nature, but as our best way back to it. This was his 'nature cure': not a passive submission to nature, but an active, sensual re-engagement. Structured as intricately as a novel, a joy to read, truthful, exquisite and questing, "Nature Cure" is a book of hope, not just for individuals, but for our species.

'Britain's greatest living nature writer' (The Times) describes how he conquered clinical depression through his re-awakened love of nature.

Richard Mabey:
Richard Mabey is the author of the bestselling, award-winning and ground-breaking FLORA BRITANNICA (which sold nearly 90,000 at -35), as well as many highly praised books about nature and the environment, including FOOD FOR FREE and THE UNOFFICIAL COUNTRYSIDE. His book about Gilbert White won the Whitbread Biography of the Year.

2008-01-23 Doesn't 'do what it says on the tin'

I really wanted to love this book. Depression is a vile, destructive thing, and also something of a mystery, and any tale of its defeat should be both inspiring and informative. Add to this the location, the East Anglian countryside, this book looked (to me) irresistible. And then there were all the fulsome comments from national newspapers on the cover...

However, in the end I was disappointed. I learnt little about depression, its causes and cures - or about the real inner life of the author. I got little sense of the horror of depression at the start, of an eventful and bumpy journey in the middle, of any interest in the psychological forces at work as we travelled, or of a real cure at the end.

Behind a veil of lyricism, the author is really rather reticent. For example, part of his healing process came via a relationship, but we are offered no insight into this at all - no doubt tactful to the lady involved, but it makes dull reading.

Of course, there are good things about this book. Mabey writes with poetry and elegance about the environment, and his love of nature shines through (`It was the kind of day that makes one feel like saying grace for a blade of grass'). Were it marketed as a series of essays on rural life, ecology etc., or just a literary diary of a year in rural East Anglia, it would be very pleasant. But it purports to be something more, and to me it does not deliver on this promise.