Running for the Hills: Growing Up on My Mother's Sheep Farm in Wales [Hardcover]

Horatio Clare (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 29, 2006

Before Horatio Clare was born, his parents fell in love with a place -- a remote sheep farm in Wales, physically and in every other way far from the lives they were forging as young professionals in London. The farm was high up a mountain, nearly impassable in winter. The neighbors were surly, or perhaps just unused to foreigners. But the setting was breathtaking, and soon it changed Jenny's and Robert's lives. What began as the somewhat conventional dream of a young, ambitious couple from London looking for a weekend home quickly became a different vision. Horatio's mother, romantic and tenacious, found it impossible to leave the fierce and beautiful land. She abandoned her job, her social world, and eventually her marriage to raise her two sons in the company of a herd of sheep, a few dogs, and the badgers, foxes, and mice who had prior claim to her new world. While other boys were going to films and listening to rock music, Horatio was weaning ewes and watching weather and surviving the furor of irascible neighbors. His childhood was marked by wonder and joy, and it is that wonderment that he bestows upon the reader as he recounts the story of the ancient, sometimes brutal, way of life on a hill farm. This wise book is a moving tribute to his mother, both beautiful and brave.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this memoir, Clare, a Welsh former barman and BBC radio producer, narrates how his parents came to own a sheep farm. Robert and Jenny were young, ambitious and, at first, in love; he had been raised internationally and was a rising war correspondent and news journalist, she was an assistant literary editor. Nevertheless, they decided to leave London and buy a farm in Wales. Within three years of their marriage in the early 1970s, Robert, "the icy rationalist," had retreated to the city and a BBC post. But Jenny, "the mad romantic," stayed behind on the mountaintop sheep farm. With the assistance of her journals, Clare recounts his mother's daily rituals: encumbered by two small boys and a loan, Jenny slogged through the yearly rituals of lambing, feeding and marketing, all the while braving vile weather and putting her children in the local school. The valley villagers marveled at "her strangeness, her prettiness, pigheadedness and determination to survive" without a man at her side; the local men sniffed around. Nearly two decades later, the family moved to the village and into a house with a working TV. Beautifully written, with enormous affection, this is a memoir of an unusual childhood, but also a careful analysis of a "perfectly, heroically mismatched" marriage. (Aug.)
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From The New Yorker

In the early nineteen-seventies, eager to escape from London smog and smitten by sweeping views of Welsh mountains, Clare's parents, both journalists, bought a remote farm in the Brecon Beacons, taking charge of more than a hundred sheep. His father considered it "a privilege and a stewardship for which the price . . . was farming," but that price—the sleepless frenzy of lambing, the horrors of maggot-infested tails, the hopelessness of the financial situation—became greater than he was willing to bear, and he returned to London. Clare's mother, deeply in love with the land and the way of life, was determined to stay. The result for the author was a childhood spent scrambling with his madcap mother to keep her dream (and the sheep) alive, and idolizing his rational father from afar. His account is remarkable for its tender observation of nature: a trip to watch badger cubs playing in the "hot yawns of full summer" is scored by "the curly whispering of the stream," and when the snow begins in winter the mountain grass is "like green fur on the back of a white beast."
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Edition edition (August 29, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074327427X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743274272
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,234,048 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars poetic reflections, October 3, 2006

By 

S. Pulich (Charlottesville, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Running for the Hills: Growing Up on My Mother's Sheep Farm in Wales (Hardcover)

This is the first book that has pushed me to sing its praises in a review at Amazon. It has to be the unique combination of wonderful humor, insight and great storytelling. There a passages contained in this book that have the resonance of the best from Cormac McCarthy. I might be more affected by them due to my similiar upbringing as the author, but his description of the natural world around him, it's rythmes and rules are spot on and will ring true to anyone who has grown up abiding to the forces of nature. Well done!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetic writing, January 10, 2007

By 

M. Foley - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Running for the Hills: Growing Up on My Mother's Sheep Farm in Wales (Hardcover)

I could not put this book down once I began it, but also, did not want it to end. The detail and creativity in describing his incredible childhood and his mother brought back memories of my own Welsh summers. I originally bought this book for a friend, but decided to keep it for myself, and have since ordered three more to share with family and friends. Absolutely lovely writing---

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Memoir, November 21, 2007

By 

Bettye Johnson (Pacific Northwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Running for the Hills: Growing Up on My Mother's Sheep Farm in Wales (Hardcover)

A poignant memoir of experiencing Welsh sheep farming with two-mis-matched parents. Clare's description of his life on the farm, the people and his parents made me feel as though I were there with him. He has an excellent descriptive ability that draws one right into the story. Having been brought up in sheep country in West Texas, I related to some of his

experiences. Bettye Johnson, award-winning author, Secrets of the Magdalene Scrolls.