I Can Hear the Cuckoo: Life in the Wilds of Wales

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I requested this book from NetGalley after seeing it on Paul Halfman Halfbook’s blog post about upcoming books – one of his other commenters mentioned they were going to look them up on NG and I followed suit and ended up with a couple. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. After reading this memoir, do watch Heart Valley, an award-winning short documentary on the life of Wilf Davies, a 73-year-old farmer who eats the same food for more than 10 years and has never left country life for city life in his lifetime.

I Can Hear the Cuckoo is a tender, philosophical memoir about the beauty of a microscopic life, the value of solitariness, and respecting the rhythm and timing of the earth.All this aside, Sidhu finds solace in a slower pace of life, adapting to rhythms of life defined by sheep farming, the weather, the light and being accepted by another sort of family, a community who accept and embrace her. Oh, this reminds me I need to be careful to spot NG books like this – luckily I haven’t had any so far but I don’t want to read anything I can’t send to Kindle. Her article about her farmer friend Wilf was the 13th most read article in The Guardian in 2021, and was made into a short film Heart Valley , directed by Christian Cargill and produced by Pulse Films. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Reading this book on my tablet through the NetGalley shelf app was a slightly tricky job, as it came out in double-spread pages in an odd font, with the next page accessed by swiping downwards, so you had to go left – right – down diagonally to the left – right, etc.

I enjoyed reading this book,I am a slow reader,but with the chapters being short,it was easy to dip in and out at my own pace and perfect for a break. She's always lived in the city, so to swap city life for rural Wales was a big step but she knew she needed something new, and after a holiday with her husband they took the plunge to move and see what life could offer them there.It's a book about moving through grief and the people we find in the midst of our sadness - and what this small community in the Welsh countryside can teach us about life. So much felt familiar yet also felt strange, a testament to how vast this beautiful countryside is and how well written this book is. But she quickly discovers a sense of belonging in the small, close-knit community she finds there; her neighbour Sarah, who teaches her how to sledge when the winter snow arrives; Jane, a 70-year-old woman who lives at the top of a mountain with three dogs and four alpacas with an inspiring attitude for life; and Wilf, the farmer who eats the same supper every day, and taught Kiran that the cuckoo arrives in April and leaves in July. I thought Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking was an excellent portrayal of grief in the aftermath of death.