Here's a coincidence: On the day that a copy of the new Robert Macfarlane book arrived at the office, I... TWELVE MOONS follows a year spent caught between the wild sea and the changing moon of the wide Northumberland skies. Each child has their own quirks and individuality, but there are also complications with physical and mental health. Giles also struggles with the latter and her writing is honest, sad and funny as what must be an exhausting and draining life is explored. This balance between motherhood and desiring individual freedom is something returned to throughout the text. The question of how can we do or be both is a powerful one. The answer is elusive, but part of it seems to be attached in the solace of the landscape, the wilderness of the Northumberland coast where the writer lives and, of course, the moon. The familiar certainty of its stages helped provide a certainty and reassurance in contrast to the unpredictability of life. It is, figuratively and literally, a light in the dark. Descriptions of the natural world permeate the novel, charting the ebbs and flows of the family’s life across a whole year. They are beautifully drawn and highlight the necessity of place in allowing fullness of life to take place whilst providing restoration for all the protagonists. It is here they can be truly themselves; the book felt just as much a love letter to the natural landscape as it did to her daughters. Navigating single parenthood, advocating from her girls and herself - an endless battle to be heard - is isolating and exhausting. Yet we see, she is gravity to the four girls in orbit around her, her own anxiety waxing and waning over the months, as the landscape around them and the turn of the seasons become her refuge.

Twelve Moons: A Year Under a Shared Sky (Audio Download Twelve Moons: A Year Under a Shared Sky (Audio Download

TWELVE MOONS follows the lunar calendar, each chapter sharing a month and a moon, and shows the simmering power that lies in our often hidden daily lives. A dazzlingly honest memoir that while never turning away from the awkward truths of life, also shows how love will flourish if we can only find a space for ourselves. The most beautiful and inspiring memoir you'll read in 2023, Twelve Moons follows a year spent caught between the wild sea and the changing moon of the wide Northumberland skies. Caro Giles lives on the far edge of the country, with her tribe of daughters: The Mermaid, The Whirlwind, The Caulbearer and The Littlest One. She is at once alone and yet surrounded.Somehow the darkness soothes me, this mother who has birthed four daughters, and must now raise them in a world that has revealed itself to be harsh and relentless. I worry about how I can show them magic and calm, when they have already seen cruel and unfair.’ Thankfully, her important words did become a book, and what a book it is. I am certain I am not alone when I say this book has reshaped how I view many things: neurodivergence; caring; mothering; the need for alone time as a woman — and much more besides. I hope Giles realises that in writing her own story with such honesty and precision, she has made many of us feel less alone, too; more connected to others spending their busy days and long nights as we are.

BBC Radio 4 - Saturday Live, Haydn Gwynne BBC Radio 4 - Saturday Live, Haydn Gwynne

I shared this book with a good friend, a mum like me whose everyday mothering strays from the conventional. There are plenty of us out there, raising anxious, poorly, neurodivergent children; dealing with schools, agencies and well meaning people who just don’t understand. I told her that reading memoirs like this make me feel less alone, in sisterhood with others who tread the wild pathways too. Adam Henson is a farmer and presenter. He runs Cotswold Farm Park in Gloucestershire, which pioneers rare breed conservation and was opened by his father Joe in 1971. Television credits include Countryfile, Lambing Live, Coast and Inside Out. His latest book ‘Two For Joy’ looks at countryside superstitions and folklore. Over the course of the year, the moon becomes her fellow traveller through dark times, and companion through joyful ones - and even when the sky is wreathed in cloud, the moon is still felt in the pull of the tides. All of this covers the time of global crisis during the pandemic. She evokes the lives of her 4 amazing daughters, The Mermaid, The Whirlwind, The Caulbearer and The Littlest One with honesty, compassion and clarity. In fact, the calm and chaos of their lives mirror the ebb and flow of the tides and the lunar cycle beautifully. The nature descriptions of landscape, sea and sky are breathtakingly realistic. We were almost invincible, our tribe, and I became used to deflecting questions about our family, and why we looked a little different…’In these hours when the world is sleeping, I feel invincible. I am a mother of course, but I am also the promise of my own future, of who I can become. As I sit and watch the shadows cast from the candles, I see myself dancing, skirt spinning, hair caught in the wind, and I know that a better version of me is emerging .’ When I stand and stare up at the moon, I can imagine kindred spirits doing the same, and I feel less alone.’ If Little Women had been written from the perspective of Marmee March – and Marmee was undergoing a divorce in the 21st-century Northumberland countryside – then it might have read a lot like Caro Giles’ Twelve Moons. This sea-swept memoir from the winner of BBC Countryfile magazine’s 2021 New Nature Writer of the Year award documents Giles’ life as a single mother with four young girls: the Mermaid, the Whirlwind, the Caulbearer and the Littlest One. Her daughters are her main protagonists, but the writing itself, done in stolen candlelit hours over the course of a year, also becomes an act of self-care that enables Giles to nurture her children’s sense of self without losing her own. This is a beautifully written memoir, following a woman's timeline through the moon cycles as she come to terms with her family's changing dynamic, how the she copes with varying aspects of her children's needs, her own needs and re-discovering herself and her freedom. We’re very excited to welcome writer Caro Giles to celebrate the release of her debut book, Twelve Moons: A Year Under A Shared Sky.

Twelve Moons - Caro Giles Twelve Moons - Caro Giles

There is such poetry to this book; such grace in the way Giles writes of her past; her children; her fears; her hopes. Here is a woman who knows what it means to sit with her own experiences — those that rattle us and leave us changed — and not shy away from the invitation to transformation such things carry in their wake. I feel humbled to be let in on this year of her life; a year that affected some members of our communities in ways that perhaps others were not quite aware of. Carers were placed in positions that no-one should ever have to be put in. I watched from my own position of relative ease as friends fought for the respite they so desperately needed; for even very basic support for their children; for people to simply listen to, and trust them, when it came to the small people for which they were caring day in, day out. A memoir told over 12 moons. A newly single mom and her 4 daughters (including one with specific needs) navigate their small town lifestyle with lots of nature hikes, singing, occasional quarantines, and ocean swimming. Sometimes the use of candles and their mystical power is a bit too much, but this mother's fortitude is incredible. Clay by Melissa Harrison is published today by Bloomsbury. "Instantly beautiful in its calm and wise tone" says Robert Macfarlane.... Set over the course of a year and charting her life as a single parent raising her four daughters, Twelve Moons is a stunning debut novel. I don’t think I’ve ever met a creative woman who wasn’t into the moon. This book is, at its core — a love story between a woman; a creative; a mother — and the moon. It is also a telling of the way life can be shaped by circumstances outside of our control; impacted on by people, events and things we have no way of influencing. More so, though, it is a story of how one person — perhaps particularly a mother — holds, within their busy, tired hands – the power to change the world; to take a dark time and make it shine.Caro Giles lives in rural Northumberland. Her memoir Twelve Moons reflects on the joys and difficulties of immersing herself in the environment that now surrounds her. Addington and Ellis argue for a noble cause, but Crewe, an editor at the London Review of Books, does not allow them to be idols. They can be jealous, selfish and lustful, obsessing over intellectual arguments (the works of Walt Whitman and the ancient Greeks feature often) rather than considering how their choices will affect their loved ones. This complexity of character makes The New Life an adroit novel of ethics. “Her face injured him with its familiarity,” Crewe writes of Catherine, Addington’s wife. “‘I did not marry for this,’ she said.” Wendy Erskine's debut, Sweet Home - a collection of short stories set in contemporary Belfast - was originally published by... A dazzlingly honest memoir that while never turning away from the awkward truths of life, also shows how love will flourish if we can only find a space for ourselves. Set against windswept beaches and ancient hills of Northumberland, this is a story steeped in nature and landscape. The presentation of the book is absolutely stunning, both the cover artwork and title are beautiful. This memoir of Caro Giles is written in such a tone that you can't help but fall in love with her family, the moon and the landscapes of Northumberland. The author writes endearingly about the most heart-breaking times for her and her family.