seven steeples

The mountain remained, unclimbed, for the first year that they lived there. Bell and Sigh, a couple in the infancy of their relationship, cut them- selves off from friends and family. Them in and the world out. From the top of the nearby mountain, they are told, you can see seven standing stones, seven schools, and seven steeples. All you have to do is climb. Taking place in a remote house in the south-west of Ireland, this rich and vivid novel spans seven years and speaks to the times we live in, asking how we may withdraw, how better to live in the natural world, and how the choices made or avoided lead us home.

SARA BAUME's previous work includes novels Spill Simmer Falter Wither and A Line Made by Walking, and her 2020 bestselling non-fiction debut, handiwork. Her writing has won the Davy Byrne's Short Story Award, the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award, the Rooney Prize, an Irish Book Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, as well as being shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize in 2020 and being nominated for countless others including the Costa and the Dublin Literary Award. She was a participant in the International Writing Program run by the University of Iowa, and has received a Literary Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. Sara grew up in East Cork and now lives in West Cork.