Enchantment
Reawakening Wonder in an Exhausted Age
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- €13.99
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- €13.99
Publisher Description
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
'It will do your soul good to read this.' NIGELLA LAWSON
A balm for our times from the internationally bestselling author of Wintering.
Our sense of enchantment is not only sparked by grand things. The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. It is transformed by our deliberate attention. The magic is of our own conjuring.
'A total joy . . . Thoughtful, patient and beautifully written, like walking with a friend as dusk settles, this is the book your soul needs right now.'
CARIAD LLOYD
'Beautifully written.'
PHILIPPA PERRY
Feeling bone-tired, anxious and overwhelmed by the rolling news cycle and the pandemic age, Katherine May seeks to unravel the threads of a life wound too tightly. Could there be another way to live - one that feels more meaningful, more grounded in the places beneath our feet? One that would allow us to feel more connected, more rested and at ease, even as seismic changes unfold on the planet?
Craving a different path, May explores the restorative properties of the natural world and begins to rekindle her sense of wonder. It is a journey that takes her from sacred wells to wild moors, from cradling seas to starfalls. Through deliberate attention and ritual, she finds nourishment and a more hopeful relationship to the world around her.
Enchantment is an invitation to each of us to experience life in all its sensual complexity and to find the beauty waiting for us there.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
At a glance, the world has stumbled back into what we accept as normality, post-pandemic. On a more cerebral level, however, many of us are still struggling to reorientate ourselves to a life that appears just as it was and permanently altered all at the same time. Emerging from the swirling sameness of the early 2020s is a deep longing for the feelings and experiences Katherine May writes of so lyrically in Enchantment, a memoir-cum-manifesto in reverence to “small wonder magnified through meaning”. May skips through her memories, embroidering personal moments of enchantment into the fabric of history and culture, most of which are linked to the natural elements—earth, water, fire, air—and the restorative properties of simply going outside. It’s a gentle argument for seeking out life’s gifts and treasuring them when you find them, which May understands is often easier said than done. Although she offers no explicit solutions to overcoming the fatigue of modern existence, the sweet anecdotes in which she witnesses her son awakening to the world around him suggest that there is enchantment to be found in helping others to recognise the feeling even when we struggle to awaken it within ourselves.
