Sara Baume is a particularly decorated author. She is the winner of a Hennessy New Irish Writing Award, the Rooney Prize for Literature and an Irish Book Award for Best Newcomer. Her debut novel, Spill Simmer Falter Wither, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. It also won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. To these illustrious accolades, we can now add one more: Turnaround Book of the Month for her new novel, seven steeples.
Taking place in a remote house in the south-west of Ireland, seven steeples follows Bell and Sigh, a new couple who steadily cut themselves off from the outside world. They are told that if you climb the nearby mountain, when you reach the top you will see seven stones, seven schools, and seven steeples. The novel spans seven years, and over its course asks how we may withdraw, how better to live in the natural world, and how the choices we make or avoid lead us home.
Praise for seven steeples:
‘A triumph.’ — Olivia Sudjic
‘Makes you feel that you’re seeing everything through new eyes.’ — Doireann Ní Ghríofa
‘That is the magic and the brilliance of this haunting, fathomlessly sad book.’ — The Guardian
‘Baume’s writing is near-faultless: instinctively balanced, precise and often surprising.’ — Financial Times‘seven steeples unfolds with lovely, unhurried lyricism. I’ve read few better descriptions of being in love. The prose often splinters into verse.’ — The Telegraph
seven steeples by Sara Baume is out now from Tramp Press
(9781916291485, p/b, £11.99)