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The hill of summer
1969. First Edition. 159 pages. Pictorial dust jacket over blue cloth. Clean pages with mild tanning throughout. Tightly bound with faint thumb-marking throughout. Boards have light shelf-wear with corner bumping. Mild crushing to spine ends. Book has forward lean. Unclipped jacket has light edgewear with tears and creasing. Mild rubbing and marking all over.
159 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1969
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About the author
J.A. Baker
9 books129 followersJohn A. Baker lives with his wife in Essex. He has had assorted jobs, including chopping down trees and pushing book trolleys in the British Museum. In 1965 he gave up work and lived on the money he had saved, devoting all his time to his obsession - the peregrine. He re-wrote his account of this bird five times before submitting it for publication. Although he had no ornithological training and had never written a book before, when The Peregrine was published in 1967 it was received with enthusiastic reviews and praise for his lyrical prose. Later that year he was awarded the distinguished Duff Cooper prize. He was also awarded a substantial Arts Council grant. His second book, The Hill of Summer, was published in 1969 and was also received with unanimous praise by the critics.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 2, 2020
This was bundled with the copy of the Peregrine in the book I borrowed from my library, so it took me a while to get to read it. Culled from his diaries kept over a long period, the writing here is simply astonishing. It's minute observations of the natural world in a corner of South-East england, recounted in language that is virtually poetry. Honestly, it's simply wonderful. Not a book to be raced through, you need to savor every sentence.
October 22, 2024
I refer to The Hill of Summer in my earlier review of The Peregrine by the same author.
These are difficult books for me to review because they lack plot in the conventional sense. The Hill of Summer is probably my favorite of the two. I envy the author's idyl on that hill, his close observation, his simple being in that place. He quotes A. E. Housman to set the direction:
"On the idle hill of Summer/Sleepy with the flow of streams...."
From there, he observes the cnanges in nature throughout a Spring to early Fall. The sea, the light, the storms, the plants, the animals and the land itself: all are part of his mosaic. As in his other book, The Peregrine, he is not sentimental, but acutely observant. Very occasionally, the prose is so rich, one might think of purple. But it is always rescued by what he sees and how he describes it.
I will use a couple of long quotations to illustrate what I mean. But I encourage anyone interested to read the book. It is unique.
"The sun is low now, and there is no warmth. The silence here is like a slow dusk spreading out upon the moor. The sun still shines, but the cold night air is descending. I leave the high places, and go down through the long shadows of the hills. The last lark sings, curlew and lapwing call in the valleys of the lost streams. The silence of night moves over me. The moor sinks slowly down, into the Cambrian darkness."
And last, from what I believe inspired the book; at least it moved me to believe – and perhaps remember – the same longing.
"This hill is like the rich, impossible land that was depicted in the bird-books I saw as a child. The smell of the past rose from those musty pages, like the smell of forgotten hay. Men stood in their stiff-looking elderly clothes, their swart, hairy faces suffused with the summer sun. Dragonflies coloured the swaying marshes; the kite, the raven, the buzzard, shone above; the wide hayfields paled to the skyline; the high woods murmured beneath their beckoning trees. I saw the clean rivers, the forests like comforting fur, the silent sky. Guns fired, but there was no sound; birds fell, but there was no blood. It was a country of unchanging summer peace, a place I could never find."
These are difficult books for me to review because they lack plot in the conventional sense. The Hill of Summer is probably my favorite of the two. I envy the author's idyl on that hill, his close observation, his simple being in that place. He quotes A. E. Housman to set the direction:
"On the idle hill of Summer/Sleepy with the flow of streams...."
From there, he observes the cnanges in nature throughout a Spring to early Fall. The sea, the light, the storms, the plants, the animals and the land itself: all are part of his mosaic. As in his other book, The Peregrine, he is not sentimental, but acutely observant. Very occasionally, the prose is so rich, one might think of purple. But it is always rescued by what he sees and how he describes it.
I will use a couple of long quotations to illustrate what I mean. But I encourage anyone interested to read the book. It is unique.
"The sun is low now, and there is no warmth. The silence here is like a slow dusk spreading out upon the moor. The sun still shines, but the cold night air is descending. I leave the high places, and go down through the long shadows of the hills. The last lark sings, curlew and lapwing call in the valleys of the lost streams. The silence of night moves over me. The moor sinks slowly down, into the Cambrian darkness."
And last, from what I believe inspired the book; at least it moved me to believe – and perhaps remember – the same longing.
"This hill is like the rich, impossible land that was depicted in the bird-books I saw as a child. The smell of the past rose from those musty pages, like the smell of forgotten hay. Men stood in their stiff-looking elderly clothes, their swart, hairy faces suffused with the summer sun. Dragonflies coloured the swaying marshes; the kite, the raven, the buzzard, shone above; the wide hayfields paled to the skyline; the high woods murmured beneath their beckoning trees. I saw the clean rivers, the forests like comforting fur, the silent sky. Guns fired, but there was no sound; birds fell, but there was no blood. It was a country of unchanging summer peace, a place I could never find."
November 3, 2021
Just a wonderful read. Baker uses nouns as verbs and verbs as adjectives as he describes the flora and fauna of 1960s British coastal area. Not something I could read in three days. It is dense and repetitive like the summer rains of August on the US East Coast and has to be taken in small doses. There is no story or plot, just a man wandering through the countryside looking for birds and finding all sorts of animals while he searches.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews