Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Early in Nature Cure RichardMabey returns continually to the swift, who in its spectacular migration may nottouch down for well over a year. In Ted Hughes's phrase, the reappearance of theswifts tells us that the globe's still working. When weencounter the author in the opening pages of this powerful memoir, his corner of theglobe is decidedly not working. A deep depression has left him alienated from hiswork and his family, financially insecure, and has cost him the Chiltern home inwhich he has lived his entire life. The open flatlands of his new home in EastAnglia--an area now dominated by agriculture, and once so desolate that it harboredan inland lighthouse--could not be more different from the dense Chiltern woods heis leaving behind. Mabey wonders frankly if this move is a crucial part of hisbecoming, finally, a true adult, or if it is just the latest step in the wrongdirection his life has mysteriously taken.
Mabeyfears that he, like the swift, may be too specialized--given to an intenselyspecific way of life which, when threatened, leaves him with nowhere to turn. A lifespent observing nature has taught him that any creature, even an entire species, might be made suddenly obsolete by the shifts of the world. Just how adaptable ishe? He leaves the Chilterns with a near-complete set of the works of John Clare andan antique microscope, but without a frying pan. From now on he will have to thinkabout a complete life, not just those bases he touched as a writer following hiscalling.
It is through this escape to anotherlife, this flitting, that his healing begins, in oftenunexpected ways. Mabey's despair stems from an inability to connect with his writingand with the nature that inspires it; the book's power lies in the way he relatesthis distance from nature to a larger problem in modern life--and in the remarkableprocess by which his reengagement with nature leads Mabey out of his depression andback to passion and wonder.