Healing happens, and acceptance that the expected ways are not always the best ones, especially around Christmas, the time her mother passed away, which now is the most painful season. Well, I see this will be available in paperback in September this year, so I’m encouraged – though it may already be in our library. When I started reading it, I found it quite hard - not because the writing was bad, but because the words were trying to tap into something in me that I had suppressed - a connection to a palate of emotions that, largely because of my focus on work, that I had learned to ignore.

I enjoyed reading this book,I am a slow reader,but with the chapters being short,it was easy to dip in and out at my own pace and perfect for a break. Fleeing their city life in London, they adapt to what they at first think is quiet and isolation, but they soon find they can hear all the sounds of nature and see their neighbours across the fields, knowing their routines as well as their own.For me this is a book that gives hope,it casts acceptance we’re there is dark and like a breeze in any season,the story whaffs over you in subtle and meaningful ways,and brings new thoughts to life,thoughts and feelings that have simmered over time, come to the surface. After hearing an interview on Radio 4 I had high hopes but ultimately this is a self-absorbed, mawkish and pretty patronising read. For me, this reads like someone went on a gap year to Thailand or India and came back spiritualising every tiny moment of it - except, in this book, it’s a city girl moving to Wales.

Yes woe is you, you lost your mum and lost contact with your blood relatives, but you know you have a loving husband, a (what sounds like a very expensive) house in a sought after part of the Welsh countryside, a second holiday home abroad, time and means to travel extensively abroad (mentions trips to New York) and a book deal for this book presumably, so things aint that bad are they Kiran? The best parts of the book, for me, was the description of the individuals and community in a very small hamlet and the impact of the seasons. I thought Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking was an excellent portrayal of grief in the aftermath of death. I eventually fell into a firm routine with this book, reading only a chapter a day or so, and savouring the insights within - just mulling them over like turning a lovely pebble in my mind’s hand - and just allowing myself to empathise and feel.

It's a book about moving through grief and the people we find in the midst of our sadness - and what this small community in the Welsh countryside can teach us about life. This amount includes seller specified domestic postage charges as well as applicable international postage, dispatch, and other fees. Reading this book on my tablet through the NetGalley shelf app was a slightly tricky job, as it came out in double-spread pages in an odd font, with the next page accessed by swiping downwards, so you had to go left – right – down diagonally to the left – right, etc. The book starts with some pictures,which entice you in and help you relate to the book as you go along. Anyway, I don’t normally read bereavement memoirs, which is what I think this would be counted as, as I was more attracted by the subtitle, “Life in the Wilds of Wales” and the author’s name, which indicated some kind of South Asian heritage.

Reading this book I felt wrapped and held in the unfolding story,while been given the space to explore,what is being offered in relation to my own journey,side by side. are tantamount to a country person writing a book about moving to London and being awestruck by the public transport network and the number of restaurants available. Having experienced profound grief myself, her depth of perception and expression reached into my very soul. This is a memoir of the move Sidhu and her husband Simon made to a small village in Wales a couple of years after the death of her mother (Sidhu was 40, her mother 62) and subsequent family fall-out. She chooses fresh air, an auditorium of silence and the purity of the natural world - and soon arrives in Cellan, a small, remote village nestled in the Welsh valleys.

The quiet life was a real revelation to her and I loved how she interspersed her new life in Wales, with looking back over her family history and the dark times during her mothers' illness. They’re helped to settle in by the people from the B’n’B they stay in on their first visit, people with their own family troubles, and they get to know other residents and incomers, including the farmer, Wilf, with whom Sidhu has profound conversations that often make them both weep.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.Kiran has written so movingly about her experiences, in which she takes the reader on the journey of both joy and heartache. Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages. It's difficult to tell at first whether Kiran is living in Wales properly as she initially mentions spending only weekends there.