It is divided into the seasons; spring, when she and her husband moved to West Wales, summer, autumn and winter. I don’t like reading on my tablet though I do read the Saturday newspaper on it as it saves having piles of newspaper around to recycle! Sidhu has the blessing and the talent to reveal others to themselves, all while exploring her personal evolution.

For me, this reads like someone went on a gap year to Thailand or India and came back spiritualising every tiny moment of it - except, in this book, it’s a city girl moving to Wales. Reading this book on my tablet through the NetGalley shelf app was a slightly tricky job, as it came out in double-spread pages in an odd font, with the next page accessed by swiping downwards, so you had to go left – right – down diagonally to the left – right, etc. The book starts with some pictures,which entice you in and help you relate to the book as you go along. Having experienced profound grief myself, her depth of perception and expression reached into my very soul.Her words do not so much weave a tapestry as assemble a life’s quilt; each individual patch revealing multiple layers of her life and her growth. Yes, I really don’t like sad animal stuff and this was on the edges of what I can tolerate but it wasn’t detailed so I was just about OK. This heart-touching 19-minute video of a Welsh shepherd is a must-watch and highly recommended, as is the memoir.

Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. The power of centering ourselves in the world is not to be understated and Kiran Sidhu conveys this wonderfully. It's a book about moving through grief and the people we find in the midst of our sadness - and what this small community in the Welsh countryside can teach us about life. She notes it’s odd to be a Brown woman in a rural Welsh setting, but also notes that everyone’s different there and you are compelled into companionship with people with whom you have little in common; also, everything has been there for centuries and is infinite so that pales into insignificance.They’re helped to settle in by the people from the B’n’B they stay in on their first visit, people with their own family troubles, and they get to know other residents and incomers, including the farmer, Wilf, with whom Sidhu has profound conversations that often make them both weep. That's what the author had lost sight of, so it felt like Wilf was put into her life to make her appreciate the small things and pleasures of nature. So although this was more of a bereavement memoir than I expected and might be difficult to read if you’re losing someone (or comforting, as she finds her way through) there was a lot of value in it for me. So much felt familiar yet also felt strange, a testament to how vast this beautiful countryside is and how well written this book is. It’s a book about moving through grief and the people we find in the midst of our sadness – and what this small community in the Welsh countryside can teach us about life.

This book is divided into four sections, classified according to the seasonal changes that accompany the various other demands upon people, their work, food, culture, and so on and so forth. Yes woe is you, you lost your mum and lost contact with your blood relatives, but you know you have a loving husband, a (what sounds like a very expensive) house in a sought after part of the Welsh countryside, a second holiday home abroad, time and means to travel extensively abroad (mentions trips to New York) and a book deal for this book presumably, so things aint that bad are they Kiran? Kiran has written so movingly about her experiences, in which she takes the reader on the journey of both joy and heartache. For me this is a book that gives hope,it casts acceptance we’re there is dark and like a breeze in any season,the story whaffs over you in subtle and meaningful ways,and brings new thoughts to life,thoughts and feelings that have simmered over time, come to the surface. I didn’t remember if I had used it or not but now I suspect I would, if I had, based on your comment.

These kinds of books require slow-paced reading, where one needs to sync in and assimilate the character’s emotional and psychological hurt from loss, and travel with them to find a recuperative resolution to become a resilient person. Her stories of the Welsh countryside, the nature, birds, trees, animals, and the people who inhabited the small hamlet were magical. Fleeing their city life in London, they adapt to what they at first think is quiet and isolation, but they soon find they can hear all the sounds of nature and see their neighbours across the fields, knowing their routines as well as their own. And so we get lovely descriptions of the Welsh countryside, the lovely Welsh people, lovely Welsh kindness, the lovely Welsh animals, the lovely Welsh seasons (do you see a pattern here?

Well, I see this will be available in paperback in September this year, so I’m encouraged – though it may already be in our library. If this is representative of how disconnected the rest of the urban population is from rural life then we will never save the environment; half the population don’t actually know what it is. Having moved first to rural west Wales and then to a small town in Powys, it’d be interesting to compare the experiences of relocating – though of course there’s evidently more to this book than just moving house. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Beautiful descriptions of the wildlife and nature and the feelings that the author associated with her journey getting to know her new surroundings.I wondered what I missed in life by thinking that the wisdom of others whose lives were different to mine could not have any bearing on my life. The author’s descriptions of grief were quite well written but for the other aspects of her life that the book covers I wanted to tell her to just get a grip.