I Can Hear the Cuckoo: Life in the Wilds of Wales

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The author’s descriptions of grief were quite well written but for the other aspects of her life that the book covers I wanted to tell her to just get a grip. Her article about her farmer friend Wilf was the 13th most read article in The Guardian in 2021, and was made into a short film Heart Valley , directed by Christian Cargill and produced by Pulse Films. But she quickly discovers a sense of belonging in the small, close-knit community she finds there; her neighbour Sarah, who teaches her how to sledge when the winter snow arrives; Jane, a 70-year-old woman who lives at the top of a mountain with three dogs and four alpacas with an inspiring attitude for life; and Wilf, the farmer who eats the same supper every day, and taught Kiran that the cuckoo arrives in April and leaves in July. Oh, this reminds me I need to be careful to spot NG books like this – luckily I haven’t had any so far but I don’t want to read anything I can’t send to Kindle.

I requested this book from NetGalley after seeing it on Paul Halfman Halfbook’s blog post about upcoming books – one of his other commenters mentioned they were going to look them up on NG and I followed suit and ended up with a couple. The best parts of the book, for me, was the description of the individuals and community in a very small hamlet and the impact of the seasons. Healing happens, and acceptance that the expected ways are not always the best ones, especially around Christmas, the time her mother passed away, which now is the most painful season. She's always lived in the city, so to swap city life for rural Wales was a big step but she knew she needed something new, and after a holiday with her husband they took the plunge to move and see what life could offer them there. Kiran Sidhu never thought she could leave London, but when her mother passes away, she knows she has to walk out of her old life and leave her toxic family behind.This amount includes seller specified domestic postage charges as well as applicable international postage, dispatch, and other fees. Well, I see this will be available in paperback in September this year, so I’m encouraged – though it may already be in our library. The book starts with some pictures,which entice you in and help you relate to the book as you go along.

Her words do not so much weave a tapestry as assemble a life’s quilt; each individual patch revealing multiple layers of her life and her growth. There was an interesting bit about how her dual heritage made her more flexible and able to accept multiple perspectives. After reading this memoir, do watch Heart Valley, an award-winning short documentary on the life of Wilf Davies, a 73-year-old farmer who eats the same food for more than 10 years and has never left country life for city life in his lifetime.I found it bizarre that, although this was very much her story, she did in fact move with her husband, who remains but a shadow in the descriptive prose used for other characters.

I fell in love with the Wales countryside, mountains and valleys as I related to the human and emotional stories of the protagonist experiencing new perspectives in family and surroundings. All this aside, Sidhu finds solace in a slower pace of life, adapting to rhythms of life defined by sheep farming, the weather, the light and being accepted by another sort of family, a community who accept and embrace her. She chooses fresh air, an auditorium of silence and the purity of the natural world - and soon arrives in Cellan, a small, remote village nestled in the Welsh valleys.About the Author: Kiran Sidhu is a freelance journalist and has written features, lifestyle and opinion pieces for The Guardian, Observer, Telegraph, The i Paper, The Independent, Metro, Woman magazine, Woman's Own and Breathe magazine. I Can Hear the Cuckoo is a tender, philosophical memoir about the beauty of a microscopic life, the value of solitariness, and respecting the rhythm and timing of the earth. And so we get lovely descriptions of the Welsh countryside, the lovely Welsh people, lovely Welsh kindness, the lovely Welsh animals, the lovely Welsh seasons (do you see a pattern here?