Seven Steeples

Seven Steeples

by Sara Baume

Narrated by Aoife McMahon

Unabridged — 5 hours, 25 minutes

Seven Steeples

Seven Steeples

by Sara Baume

Narrated by Aoife McMahon

Unabridged — 5 hours, 25 minutes

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Overview

One of Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Books of the Year ¿ Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize ¿ Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize ¿ An Irish Times Best Book of the Year

“One of the most beautiful novels I have ever read.” -New York Times Book Review

The acclaimed novel about a couple who, pushing against traditional expectations, move with their dogs to the Irish countryside where they embed themselves in nature and make attempts to disappear from society.

It is the winter following the summer they met. A couple, Bell and Sigh, move into a remote house in the Irish countryside with their dogs. Both solitary with misanthropic tendencies, they leave the conventional lives stretched out before them to build another-one embedded in ritual, and away from the friends and family from whom they've drifted.

They arrive at their new home on a clear January day and look up to appraise the view. A mountain gently and unspectacularly ascends from the Atlantic, “as if it had accumulated stature over centuries. As if, over centuries, it had steadily flattened itself upwards.” They make a promise to climb the mountain, but-over the course of the next seven years-it remains unclimbed. We move through the seasons with Bell and Sigh as they come to understand more about the small world around them, and as their interest in the wider world recedes.

Seven Steeples is a beautiful and profound meditation on the nature of love and the resilience of nature. Through Bell and Sigh, and the life they create for themselves, Sara Baume explores what it means to escape the traditional paths laid out before us-and what it means to evolve in devotion to another person, and to the landscape.


Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Seven Steeples is one of the most beautiful novels I have ever read….Baume’s descriptions of landscape are lovelier than I can express; you simply have to read them yourself.” — New York Times Book Review

"Haunting and dreamlike and wonderful to read…[Seven Steeples] powerfully recalls the middle act of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, that heart-stoppingly moving depiction of time passing through an empty house, of loss accumulating. Baume offers up an astonishing prose poem that keeps close religiously and lovingly to the physical throughout." — The Guardian

"With calm scrutiny and a vividly beautiful poetic touch…[Sara Baume] succeeds wonderfully."  — Wall Street Journal

"Exquisitely detailed...one of the brilliant particularities of Seven Steeples is its intelligent and satisfying portrayal of time." — New York Review of Books

“It takes both daring and humility to write a book as unique as Seven Steeples. In unfailingly precise and lyrical prose, and with a religious attention to even the humblest things of this world, Sara Baume pays homage to nature, to hearth and home, and to the miracle of a love engendered by the union of two solitaries.” — Sigrid Nunez, author of the National Book Award winner The Friend

“Seven Steeples is a portrait of a life, a house, a landscape, and of time itself. The accumulation of years feels palpable, as if we are watching the sifting grains of a sand clock, within this tender, hypnotic, and wholly original novel.”  — Aysegül Savas, author of Walking on the Ceiling and White on White

“A triumph….I was utterly charmed by the gentle rhythms and precision of this intricately wrought existential inventory.” — Olivia Sudjic, author of Sympathy and Exposure

“In its unique evocation of human and natural life, Seven Steeples somehow captures the strangeness of being alive in this world at this time. Among those rare books that makes you feel that you’re seeing everything through new eyes.” — Doireann Ní Ghríofa, author of A Ghost in the Throat 

“Subtle and luminous, playful and profound, Seven Steeples brings to life the symphonic voices and rhythms of nature. An exquisite tribute to the life in all things, and a testament to the worlds we build together.”  — Roisin Kiberd, author of The Disconnect

“[Baume] takes the everyday and makes it sing. She takes our normal lives and makes them glisten…Seven Steeples is about what it means to tread gently; with intention; on equal footing with every creature we share our days with. The writing is unsettling good; the attention to detail is like no other.” — Kerri ní Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places

“Lush imagery and poetic punctuation choices are ever-present in Seven Steeples, appealing to fans of Paulette Jiles and Geraldine Brooks...Baume sets readers down in a near-untamed wilderness and shrinks the world down to a garden, a cabin, and its profoundly resilient occupants.” — Booklist (starred review)

Aysegül Savas

“Seven Steeples is a portrait of a life, a house, a landscape, and of time itself. The accumulation of years feels palpable, as if we are watching the sifting grains of a sand clock, within this tender, hypnotic, and wholly original novel.” 

Kerri ní Dochartaigh

[Baume] takes the everyday and makes it sing. She takes our normal lives and makes them glisten…Seven Steeples is about what it means to tread gently; with intention; on equal footing with every creature we share our days with. The writing is unsettling good; the attention to detail is like no other.

Sigrid Nunez

It takes both daring and humility to write a book as unique as Seven Steeples. In unfailingly precise and lyrical prose, and with a religious attention to even the humblest things of this world, Sara Baume pays homage to nature, to hearth and home, and to the miracle of a love engendered by the union of two solitaries.

Olivia Sudjic

A triumph….I was utterly charmed by the gentle rhythms and precision of this intricately wrought existential inventory.

The Guardian

"Haunting and dreamlike and wonderful to read…[Seven Steeples] powerfully recalls the middle act of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, that heart-stoppingly moving depiction of time passing through an empty house, of loss accumulating. Baume offers up an astonishing prose poem that keeps close religiously and lovingly to the physical throughout."

Doireann Ní Ghríofa

In its unique evocation of human and natural life, Seven Steeples somehow captures the strangeness of being alive in this world at this time. Among those rare books that makes you feel that you’re seeing everything through new eyes.

Booklist (starred review)

Lush imagery and poetic punctuation choices are ever-present in Seven Steeples, appealing to fans of Paulette Jiles and Geraldine Brooks...Baume sets readers down in a near-untamed wilderness and shrinks the world down to a garden, a cabin, and its profoundly resilient occupants.

New York Times Book Review

Seven Steeples is one of the most beautiful novels I have ever read….Baume’s descriptions of landscape are lovelier than I can express; you simply have to read them yourself.

Roisin Kiberd

Subtle and luminous, playful and profound, Seven Steeples brings to life the symphonic voices and rhythms of nature. An exquisite tribute to the life in all things, and a testament to the worlds we build together.” 

Wall Street Journal

"With calm scrutiny and a vividly beautiful poetic touch…[Sara Baume] succeeds wonderfully."

Library Journal

04/01/2022

Shortly after they meet and recognize they are kindred spirits who crave solitude, Bell (Isabel) and Sigh (Simon) decide they have had enough of waitressing, factory work, and yes, even their families and friends. Taking a chance on a life alone together, they rent a lichen-encrusted cottage in a remote part of Ireland at the foot of a mountain they promise themselves they will someday climb. Together with their two dogs, they set up housekeeping with discards from the very people with whom they've cut ties and begin a new minimalist life with few modern distractions. Every aspect of the flora and fauna they observe on their daily walks is described in language so mesmerizing that even a bird poo stain on laundry becomes a work of art. As the years pass, their comical neglect of the most basic details of daily living binds these two sweet misanthropes ever closer together. VERDICT Award-winning novelist Baume's gifts as a visual artist can be seen not only in the poetry of her majestic words but also in her creative use of spacing that enhances this lovely novel that is made for this time in history of pandemic-triggered isolation.—Beth E. Andersen

Product Details

BN ID: 2940178533710
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 04/26/2022
Edition description: Unabridged
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