Sea Bean

"Sally’s is the first book I can think of—certainly the first recent book, published in the UK—that combines nature writing and thinking about chronic illness. Part of the narrative is about Sally’s development of rheumatoid arthritis after a pregnancy, and how that changes her relationship with the natural world. Sally and I have been in correspondence for several years, remotely. She sent me a book that has been really important to me in the writing of my own. So it was amazing to see this book, Sea Bean , develop. Through that time, we had been talking about the lack of thought about embodiment – about the realities of living in a body – which is so central to nature writing, or the assumption of a certain kind of embodiment, which I’ve been thinking about for a long time. And Sally writes about both the landscape of Shetland and her experiences of illness so beautifully. And that aspect of beauty, I think, is really important. So much writing about illness ends up being something quite separate from the rest of our existence. To me, those things can’t be separated. So it’s amazing to see somebody writing about this together."