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Afterword
Illness is an imaginative as well as a physical constriction, and I wanted to spread my wings. I thought about home, and about the different ways in which that sense of belonging might be conceived. I thought about how our longing for the familiar, the known, exists alongside our appetite for the new, the undiscovered, and how we all have to negotiate a path through those contrary impulses. I watched the swifts on their exhilarating vespers flights. I dreamed of a return to vitality and independence. I imagined an adventure, a quest. And so a book was born out of the confluence of many streams of thought and experience – home, illness, recovery, poems, nature, science, love of language, and a great longing to drink down the world in gulps after such a period of deprivation.
No elaborate plans. It was only by writing and rewriting that I found myself at home in a form – a sort of poetic form, in which the images would do most of the talking. Similarly, a structure emerged – eight movements, which I thought of as an octave, a scale that begins and ends with the same note: home. The third movement set entirely on a bus, the sixth entirely on a train. The rhyme of birds and words ghosting between the lines, and echoes sounding throughout, a pattern of images, so that a book about nostalgia would always be remembering itself . . . I didn’t worry about what kind of book I was writing. I didn’t understand the post-publication pressure to locate The Snow Geese in a particular category or genre. It’s not as if we inherit six or seven templates into which we have to shoehorn our way of seeing the world. I’ve loved seeing the book appear in different provinces of bookshops, and still relish the fact that a friend in New York found it in the Pet Care section.
I remember the kindness so many people showed me along the way. And how that generosity included stories: Jean’s forehand winner, Rollin’s joyful flight under the Golden Gate, the Viking’s skirmishing with widows, Marshall’s wild garlic, Sam’s rivermouth swim with beluga whales. I remember writing in the small back room of a friend’s house, the table shuddering beneath my forearms whenever the washing machine entered the spin cycle. Or in the flat in Gospel Oak, hearing the playground clamour of a nearby primary school dissolve into the sound of geese roosting on a prairie lake. For days, a symphony orchestra and full chorus rehearsed Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana in All Hallows Church across the road, the cases of double basses standing outside the door like sentries, or smokers. I was often anxious, even afraid. Sometimes writing seemed little more than an arena for self-criticism. But even then I felt a strange rightness about The Snow Geese, as if there’d been a hole in the universe the exact size of that book, waiting to be filled.
WILLIAM FIENNES
2015
PICADOR CLASSIC
CHANGE YOUR MIND
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‘One page and I was hooked. Soon I was reading with a pen in hand, just to underline all the seamless transitions, the fresh surprising similes, the very exact and precise observations. Fiennes is a very fine writer and this book is pure delight’
PETER CAREY
‘A terrific book, simple, elegantly written and modest toned. Fiennes has a poet’s eye for nuance and detail, and a winning turn of phrase. The Snow Geese is a delight’
Spectator
‘The Snow Geese is an inspired work of natural history, and a poetic meditation on leaving and homing, wandering and belonging. With this beautiful, haunting debut, William Fiennes joins that small, very special band of writer-explorers – Emerson and Thoreau, Annie Dillard and Bruce Chatwin – who give us another pair of eyes: he has renewed the variety and wonder of the world’
MARINA WARNER
‘The Snow Geese moved me as have few other recent books. No one who reads it is likely to continue to look at the world in the same way’
Times Literary Supplement
‘A beautifully quiet, beautifully solitary and beautifully reflective book . . . The Snow Geese is studded with constant, small perceptual triumphs’
Evening Standard
‘The descriptions of the geese and their environment are jaw-droppingly beautiful. But Fiennes’ most remarkable talent is for describing the quotidian with such freshness that it is like seeing the world for the first time’
Mail on Sunday
‘A generosity of spirit is one of this book’s most attractive features, both in what is described and what one infers about the author . . . The playful interweaving of detail gives the book its charm . . . Hurrah for William Fiennes’
Independent
‘A remarkable journey . . . Moving, poetic, and sprinkled with philosophical musings, this is travel writing at its very best’
Daily Mail
‘A rare travel book, and not only for the outstanding literary promise of its author . . . The Snow Geese is the debut of a striking talent’
Guardian
‘As hauntingly written a book about natural history as one is likely to find’
Scotsman
‘His sharp eye and his inventive similes take us everywhere with him . . . an unmistakably gifted writer’
The Times
‘His descriptive prose has a hard-edged brightness which startles and delights’
Financial Times
‘This is one of those rare books where time and again you find yourself gasping at the author’s mastery of the “phrase juste” . . . It will win him many prizes’
Mail on Sunday
‘An inspired work of natural history and travel. A classic’
Irish Independent
‘Fiennes’ voice is fresh and singular . . . An appealing and gifted book�
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Observer
‘An original blend of travel writing, autobiography and reportage . . . Though the erudite asides and diversions give the book much of its colour, it is the dual nature of Fiennes’ inner and outer journey which gives it its meaning’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Generous and thoughtful . . . Some of Fiennes’ phrase-making is brilliant’
Daily Telegraph
THE SNOW GEESE
WILLIAM FIENNES received the 2003 Hawthornden Prize for The Snow Geese, which was also shortlisted for the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize. He is the recipient of a Somerset Maugham Award and was Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. His most recent book is the highly acclaimed The Music Room. He lives in London.
Also by William Fiennes
THE MUSIC ROOM
First published 2002 by Picador
First published in paperback 2003 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2015 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-4472-7545-9
Copyright © William Fiennes 2002
Introduction copyright © Robert Macfarlane 2015
Afterword copyright © William Fiennes 2015
Cover Photography © Aluma Images/Getty Images.
Maps and illustrations by Neil Gower
The right of William Fiennes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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