Running for the Hills: A Memoir (Paperback)

by Horatio Clare (Author)
Key Phrases: big barn, first meadow, lower meadows, Beast House, Hill Fields, Far Meadow (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"The joy of Running for the Hills lies in its seemingly effortless richness and precision. . . . It is the prose equivalent of a collection of poems by Wordsworth. [A] heartening, raw, tender, radiant first book." -- The Times (London)

"Running for the Hills is a beautifully crafted story of a young boy's adventures growing up on a remote Welsh sheep farm and his mother's love affair with that life. Horatio Clare vividly and lyrically evokes a world that is hard yet tender, bleak yet bountiful."-- Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle

"A beautifully written book that immerses you in the harshness and the splendor of living off the land on a Welsh sheep farm. Clare's prose allows you to experience the cycle of life and death."-- Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation

"Touching, funny and extremely well-written. . . . There are passages here that remind one of Wordsworth's recollections of his Lake District boyhood in The Prelude." -- The Daily Telegraph (London)

"[An] enchanting book. . . . [Clare's] lyrical description is so beautifully written that you almost hold your breath." -- The Daily Mail (London)

"[A] beautifully written memoir. . . . Despite its portrayal of hardship, Running for the Hills is lifted by its sense of joy and spiritual freedom." -- The Economist

"With a clear eye and a strong, graceful pen, Clare describes the almost romantic wonder of being a child in a wild, often inhospitable landscape. A tender, eloquent, honest book about a remarkable family and the process of understanding your parents as well as loving them." -- Sarah Dunant, author of The Birth of Venus

Product Description
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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (March 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743274288
• ISBN-13: 978-0743274289
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #857,958 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Running for the Hills, February 27, 2008

By	Guenveur H. Burnell (Kent, Ohio) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I read this book last year, based on a short review in The New Yorker magazine. It is now a book I want to read over and over again, so I am buying a copy of it. When you read it you are there with the author as a child in the wild Welsh countryside, feeling the air, hearing the wind, experiencing the sense of isolation and the chill of fear of the unknown when a stranger lurks about the house. The author is able to convey so much: his confusion about his parents' situation, his mother's need to find herself as a country woman raising sheep, despite her urban, sophisticated background. He makes everything so tactile and visible that I think if I ever went to that part of the U.K. I would feel as if I had already been there. What as beautiful writer is Horatio Clare! This is a magical book. Read it. And read it again.