The Wild Life: A Year of Living on Wild Food

This is a great book: tough and funny, metaphysical and earthy, passionate and honest. Most of all, honest: not just in the sense of 'candid', but honest also in that it reveals the sheer bloody awkwardness, and the sheer awkward bloodiness, of trying to live even semi-wild these days. What might seem like a gimmick turns out to be a way of discovering a great deal about that complicated thing we call 'land'. There's also some beautiful writing about place. Robert Macfarlane, author of the international bestseller, The Wild Places Beautifully written. The closest thing you can get to poetry in prose. Hay on Wye Literary Festival 20090509 A fascinating account of each month as [John Lewis Stempel] tracks, kills and gathers what he needs to stay alive...But this is more than just a rundown of all the perfectly edible stuff out there that we tend to overlook in our everyday, supermarket-dominated lives. The Wild Life is also a meditation on survival and our connection to the land...A timely and compelling book Sunday Telegraph 20090524 Tough, honest, funny, poetic and informative, this is an initiatory and spiritual journey. A life lesson for us all. Ecologist A large slice of nostalgia served up in an amusing and informative narrative. Manchester Evening News