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Beyond Spring review in TLS

An extract from a review in the Times Literary Supplement today! Matthew sent me a photo from the review and I have transcribed parts below… Nadia x

 

Matthew Oates, by contrast, is a fully authentic naturalist who is scarcely packaged at all. His book consists in a series of wonderful effusions – about places, poets and personal encounters with wildlife – loosely arranged as a journey from spring to summer.. they have an immediacy and passion that compel attention. Oates operates at some point of intersection between science, natural history and poetry. His source material is his own extensive first-hand knowledge and deeply pondered experience. He ranges confidently over topics as various as Wordsworth’s unsatisfactory descriptions of daffodils (they “waver” not “nod”), the first Brimstone butterfly epiphany in March each year, the joy in massed dandelions, the dippers of Dovedale… and the dramatic ladybird invasion of 1976… He much prefers the resources of metaphor himself and he is not afraid to invoke such unfashionable concepts as rapture, metaphysics and the sublime

 

TLS (Times Literary Supplement March 15th, 2018) Jeremy Mynott

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