The Flow: Rivers, Water and Wildness - WINNER OF THE 2023 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING

by Amy-Jane Beer

Overview

WINNER OF THE 2023 JAMES CROPPER WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING

'Unparalleled.' THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE

'A true masterpiece.' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

'A tour de force.' GUY SHRUBSOLE

'Quietly courageous.' PATRICK BARKHAM

'Lyrical, wholehearted and wise.' LEE SCHOFIELD

'A knockout. I loved it.' MELISSA HARRISON

'Honest, raw and moving.' SOPHIE PAVELLE

'An extraordinary book by an extraordinary author.' CHRIS JONES

'A book of wit, wonder and of wisdom.' NICK ACHESON

'Beautiful.' NICOLA CHESTER

A visit to the rapid where she lost a cherished friend unexpectedly reignites Amy-Jane Beer's love of rivers setting her on a journey of natural, cultural and emotional discovery.

On New Year's Day 2012, Amy-Jane Beer's beloved friend Kate set out with a group of others to kayak the River Rawthey in Cumbria. Kate never came home, and her death left her devoted family and friends bereft and unmoored.

Returning to visit the Rawthey years later, Amy realises how much she misses the connection to the natural world she always felt when on or close to rivers, and so begins a new phase of exploration.

The Flow is a book about water, and, like water, it meanders, cascades and percolates through many lives, landscapes and stories. From West Country torrents to Levels and Fens, rocky Welsh canyons, the salmon highways of Scotland and the chalk rivers of the Yorkshire Wolds, Amy-Jane follows springs, streams and rivers to explore tributary themes of wildness and wonder, loss and healing, mythology and history, cyclicity and transformation.

Threading together places and voices from across Britain, The Flow is a profound, immersive exploration of our personal and ecological place in nature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472977403
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	04/16/2024
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	544,532
Product dimensions:	5.15(w) x 7.75(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Amy-Jane Beer is a biologist turned naturalist and writer. She has worked for more than 20 years as a science writer and editor, contributing to more than 40 books on natural history. She is currently a Country Diarist for The Guardian, a columnist for British Wildlife and a feature writer for BBC Wildlife magazine, among others. She campaigns for the equality of access to nature and collaboration between the farming and conservation sectors. She is a member of the steering group of the environmental arts charity New Networks for Nature and the land rights campaign RightToRoam.org.uk, and is honorary President of the national park society Friends of the Dales. Her book The Flow won the 2023 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Only water, moving on

Chapter 1: Fresh and yet so very old

Eddy: Snow dome

Chapter 2: Torrent

Eddy: Hollowing

Chapter 3: Oak-water

Eddy: Groundwater

Chapter 4: Fly while we may

Eddy: Dark water

Chapter 5: Lines upon the land

Meander: Bath toys

Chapter 6: The meanings of water

Eddy: Otter

Chapter 7: The Bell Guy and the Gypsey

Chapter 8: A willow grows aslant a brook

Eddy: Minus seven

Chapter 9: The cry of the Dart

Meander: Flow

Chapter 10: Trespassers will

Eddy: Summer on the Nene

Chapter 11: Chalk stream dreaming

Eddy: Heron

Chapter 12: Land covered by water

Eddy: High water

Chapter 13: Ouroboros

Meander: Ghosts in the willows

Chapter 14: The silver fish

Chapter 15: Light and water

Eddy: Damnation

Chapter 16: Anadrome

Chapter 17: Riverwoods

Eddy: Flowover

Chapter 18: Confluence and influence

Meander: A river released

Chapter 19: The Mucky Beck

Eddy: Withow Gap

Chapter 20: Rodents of unusual size

Eddy: The narrow bridge

Chapter 21: Heartland

Chapter 22: A descent into Hell Gill (and out the other side)

Epilogue

Author's note and acknowledgements

Further reading

Index

Editorial Reviews

A true masterpiece; generous, elegant, acute, tender and furious.” —Charles Foster, Times Literary Supplement

“The perfect commingling of deep research with sparkling observation and quiet eddies of feeling, helmed by a lifelong kayaker, biologist and all-round adventurous soul... small wonder The Flow is such a knockout. I loved it.” —author of All Among the Barley

“A rich mix of history and mythology, of science and nature writing at its very best.” —PD Smith, The Guardian

“Our 2023 Nature Book of the Year winner is regrettably very topical, and every judge absolutely loved the book. The glorious detail and personal experiences, all written in such elegant and beautifully poetic language, was unparalleled.” —Alastair Giles, Director of the James Cropper Wainwright Prize

“A quietly courageous, open-hearted exploration of Britain's becks, bourns and streams.” —Patrick Barkham, author of The Butterfly Isles

“Lyrical, wholehearted and wise, The Flow is a hymn for the rivers of Britain.” —Lee Schofield, author of Wild Fell

“Honest, raw and moving, Amy's prose is as captivating as the rivers she describes. I thought I knew what rivers were, but this stunning book is a powerful reminder of their infinity, their mystery, and their bewildering complexity.” —Sophie Pavelle, author of Forget Me Not

“The Flow moves deftly between deeply touching personal experience and carefully-researched erudition. It is a book of wit, of wonder and of wisdom.” —Nick Acheson, naturalist and conservationist

“In a golden age for nature writing, this stunning book is one of the very best.” —Ben Hoare, BBC Countryfile

“A gutsy biologist with webbed feet, Amy-Jane Beer plunges the reader into rivers the length and breadth of Britain. We emerge bathed in wonder and full of fresh understanding.” —Derek Niemann, author of Birds in a Cage

“Part memoir, part celebration of the many rivers and waters of Britain, The Flow is passionately alive – a work of tremendous range and scope by one of our finest writers about the living world.” —Caspar Henderson, author of The Book of Barely Imagined Beings

“The Flow is a tour de force: blending crystal-clear prose with mythic poetry and a cascade of lucid facts, washed down with uplifting insights into life, death and the water that sustains us.” —Guy Shrubsole, author of Who Owns England?

“A fascinating travelogue […] Beer's prose has the luminous beauty of poetry, blending personal experience and absorbing research with a sense of awe.” —Hannah Beckerman, The Observer

“Haunted by loss, The Flow is about the urgency of a life, land and love.” —Nicola Chester, author of On Gallows Down

“From the incredibly moving opening scene, to a delightful conclusion, Amy-Jane Beer takes us on a journey on, in and through the waterways of Britain, in sparkling prose. A worthy successor to Roger Deakin's Waterlog.” —Stephen Moss, author of The Robin

“The Flow is a wonderful book: as passionate as it is knowledgeable. From Yorkshire Derwent to Dart to Dee via the Zanskar, Amy-Jane Beer really does take us, in her phrase, 'as close as we might ever get to being a river'.” —Mark Wormald, author of The Catch

“With a poet's gift for description, Beer makes her global travels vivid […] She's got an ability to make even a small moment resonate, such as her child's serendipitous discovery of a carnivorous sundew plant, with sharp prose and quick pacing. The result is an aquatic tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly

“Beer's book examines the reverential place rivers hold in our culture and the stories hidden in their depths.” —Joe Shute, The Sunday Telegraph

“A sublime and companionable meditation on nature's processes.” —Charles Foster, Times Literary Supplement

“I have read dozens of books about rivers and The Flow is one of the finest.” —David Profumo, Country Life

“Necessary reading for us all.” —Julie Brominicks, landscape writer, BBC Countryfile

“This erudite book is a joyous combination of science, nature, history, and mythology […] a genuinely moving voyage of discovery of our ecological and personal place in the nature that surrounds us.” —Yorkshire Life

“The Flow is an epic memoir that inspires awe for rivers and reveals their dual nature as both boundaries and portals.” —Kristine Morris, Foreword Reviews

“Beer's moving book is about water and landscapes as well as friendship, memory, loss and resilience. It is full of quiet wisdom and passion, and shows us what words can do when the personal and the ecological are blended organically.” —Elif Shafak, New Statesman

“Water courses through biologist Amy-Jane Beer's deep-dive into the lyrical beauty of Britain's rivers.” —Country & Town House

“Simply beautiful.” —Stephen Moss

“The Flow is gutsy and profound from the off, with exquisite evocation of place, dives into deep time, moments of humour and surging anger at what we've done to our rivers.” —Ben Hoare, BBC Countryfile

“As with all the best books about nature, The Flow is a marriage of two things: a hard-won knowledge of the subject and a rare ability to write beautifully [...] a warm and immersive book.” —Ian Carter, British Wildlife

“Beautiful book.” —Nicola Chester, RSPB Magazine

“The book unfolds in a fascinating mix of research into our waterways and gut-wrenching emotion. I can't find the words to do it justice, read it!” —Charlotte Smith, BBC Countryfile

From the Publisher

08/22/2022

“We come from water, and water runs through us. It carries our chemistry and our stories,” writes biologist Beer (Cool Nature) in this lyrical, moving survey. She opens with a tragedy: in 2012, Beer’s close friend died in a kayaking accident on the River Rawthey in North West England. In the wake of that loss, Beer began to study water in its many forms, from rivers of gas in the sky to glaciers that “groan and boom and spew rivers from their nostrils.” With a poet’s gift for description, Beer makes her global travels vivid. She lovingly details an encounter with a beaver in the wild and covers their reintroduction after extinction in the area, all in service of a broader look at the history of humanity’s “tinkering with” water flow, which goes back for millennia. Beer also covers chemistry (“The willingness of these copious ingredients to combine makes water very abundant stuff”), climate change, and the depiction of unusual water phenomena in literature (Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about the haunting sound of water moving in The Hound of the Baskervilles). She’s got an ability to make even a small moment resonate, such as her child’s serendipitous discovery of a carnivorous sundew plant, with sharp prose and quick pacing. The result is an aquatic tour de force. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly