The Fish Ladder: A Journey Upstream

by Katharine Norbury

Overview

Katharine Norbury was abandoned as a baby in a Liverpool convent. Raised by a loving adoptive family, she grew into a wanderer, drawn by the landscape of the British countryside.

One summer, following the miscarriage of a much-longed-for child, Katharine sets out-accompanied by her nine-year-old daughter, Evie-with the idea of following a river from the sea to its source. The luminously observed landscape grounds the walkers, providing both a constant and a context to their expeditions. But what begins as a diversion from grief evolves into a journey to the source of life itself: a life threatening illness forces Katharine to seek a genetic medical history, and this new and unexpected path delivers her to the door of the woman who abandoned her all those years ago.

Combining travelogue, memoir, exquisite nature writing, and fragments of poems with tales from Celtic mythology, The Fish Ladder has a rare emotional resonance. It is a portrait of motherhood, of a literary marriage, a hymn to the adoptive family, but perhaps most of all it is an exploration of the extraordinary majesty of the natural world. Imbued with a keen and joyful intelligence, this original and life-affirming book is set to become a classic of its genre.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632860019
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	08/11/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	742 KB

About the Author

Katharine Norbury trained as a film editor with the BBC and worked extensively in television drama. She completed her M.A. in creative writing at University of East Anglia and is a doctoral candidate at Goldsmiths College. She lives in London. The Fish Ladder is her first book. Find her on Twitter at @kjnorbury.
Katharine Norbury trained as a film editor with the BBC and has worked extensively in film and television drama. She is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA programme at UEA. The Fish Ladder is her first book. It was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and was a Telegraph Best Book of the Year 2015. Katharine was chosen as the Observer's Rising Star in non-fiction for 2015. She lives in London with her family.

@kjnorbury

Editorial Reviews

06/08/2015
In this engaging story full of old Welsh and Scottish names, British film editor Norbury uses the search for the source of a river—physically as well as metaphorically—to convey the need for finding her birth mother. The notion of following a river to its source grew from reading the novel The Well at the World’s End by the Scottish writer Neil M. Gunn. Norburry set out several times, either alone or with her nine-year-old daughter, Evie, to find these sources—of Dunbeath Water, Scotland, mentioned in the novel, and also many rivers near Norbury’s summer cottage in Wales and family home in Cheshire, England. A miscarriage of a baby she eagerly wanted triggered thoughts of her own adoption. She also recalls her long-ago visit to the convent of the Sisters of Mercy, outside of Liverpool on the Mersey River, where she learned from the nuns that she was in fact a cherished baby and cared for by Sister Marie Therese. There are many moments of extraordinary synergy in this limpid, patiently meandering narrative, and Norbury manages to incorporate them in a natural, light-pedaling fashion. Her search for her biological mother, the sudden ill health of her beloved adopted mother, and Norbury’s discovery of a tumor lodged deep in her own rib cage all shape an extraordinary and moving journey. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Extraordinary . . . Often unbearably rich in its depiction of grief, physicality and a search for family, the book is framed by actual, mythical and metaphorical journeys to the source of water." —The Guardian, "Readers' Books of the Year 2015"

“Norbury stirs the imagination with descriptive passages . . . a beautifully written book about a journey through wild places in the landscape and the heart.” —starred review, Kirkus Reviews

“Engaging . . . There are many moments of extraordinary synergy in this limpid, patiently meandering narrative . . . extraordinary and moving.” —Publishers Weekly

“Eccentric and luminous, this is a great addition to the growing genre of nature ramble memoir.” —The Guardian

"A very moving memoir . . . Its lyrical narrative style, never overblown, sets it apart." —The Independent

“Deeply affecting, atmospheric and sensuous, The Fish Ladder is a beautifully written meditation of what it is to be alone, of yearning for connection, and of the consolations of nature.” —Polly Samson, author of Perfect Lives

“[The Fish Ladder] makes emotional and profound ventures into landscape, the importance of place and the very real connections between physical and interior voyages.” —Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

11/01/2015
Recovering from the death of her child in utero and from enduring the pregnancy until it ended naturally a month after that, Norbury becomes fixated on a book she read years before, which describes following a river from its mouth to its source. At the same time, her loss has made her more interested in her own birth and adoption, and the two compulsions come together when she sets off on natural explorations in the British countryside with her daughter, and finds her birthplace—a convent—and nuns who remember her as a baby. The bulk of the account, the woodsy writing about the natural world and other themes such as Celtic myths, is dreamlike and lovely; these make the book more suited to nature readers than to adoptees. At the same time, nature lovers won't necessarily want to read about adoption. VERDICT This account is well written but will struggle to find an audience.—Henrietta Verma, Library JournalMolly

Library Journal

Katharine Norbury meanders like a quiet stream through the British countryside, interspersing sad memories with quiet walks from the ocean to the river mouth. Norbury’s lovely British accent and soft tones capture the low-key wandering and introspection at the center of this memoir. After a miscarriage, Norbury walks to take her mind off her sorrow, sometimes taking along her daughter, Evie. Her grief and depression are palpable in her voice. She recounts the death of her father, her mother’s illness, and her fruitless efforts to meet her birth parents after treatment for breast cancer. But THE FISH LADDER isn’t all dark. Norbury expresses wonder at magical stories of queens, salmon, and the success of a fish ladder in Pitlochry. Her sudden burst of energy to escape the ferocious biting midges in Scotland is almost light. A.B. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

MAY 2016 - AudioFile

★ 2015-04-21
British writer Norbury's debut memoir takes readers on vigorous walks through lochs, rivers, and soggy marshes in Scotland, England, and Wales. Adopted by loving parents and unable to identify, not for lack of trying, her birth parents, the author found that the inability to construct her family's story left her "dizzyingly adrift," living with her writer husband and their daughter Evie in both Spain and England. A miscarriage, as well as the loss of her father years before, deepened her loneliness. Inspired by Neil M. Gunn's novel The Well at the World's End, Norbury was intuitively drawn to the idea of walking from the mouth of a river to its source. For starters, she and Evie walked the banks of Afon Geirch, which runs into Cable Bay in Wales, where the family has a summer cottage. Though thwarted by fences and mud, she was not deterred. Following her expeditions could send readers to an old-fashioned atlas that includes the many bodies of water she encountered, including Dunbeath Water, near Spey, Scotland, where the "well at the world's end" supposedly exists. Whether the well is real or fictional hardly matters. It's the journey that counts. Norbury, whose background includes film editing for the BBC, stirs the imagination with descriptive passages—"Salt-white boulders lined a powdery shore of crystal sand, unmarked and clean, its whiteness stained to the colour of cork by the peat"—and her many digressions delight. For example, there is the tale of Boand, the goddess who went to seek a forbidden well in the land beyond her own, and that of her aunt's flirtation (or was it an affair?) with a fisherman. All the stories circle back to themes of loneliness, yearning, and self-discovery. As the fish ladder enables salmon to swim upstream, Norbury's treks helped her come to terms with the circumstances of her birth. A beautifully written book about a journey through wild places in the landscape and the heart.

Kirkus Reviews