I adored this beautiful and thoughtful story of Michael Malay's life in the UK, and how he can chart his relationship with the world through its nature. Most nature books claim to make the world feel bigger and more precious, but Late Light really does. Worth saying as well, despite how I may have made it sound, this book is eminently readable, and despite the subject matter it's also by no means a depressing read - a little melancholy perhaps, but after reading it I felt more ready to engage with these issues than I have for several months. This is a book about falling in love with vanishing thingsLate Light is the story of Michael Malay's own journey, an Indonesian-Australian-American making a home for himself in England and finding strange parallels between his life and the lives of the animals he examines.

Malay's prose is gorgeous and astute; he looks with fresh eyes at unpopular species and finds poetry and meaning. It is about the wonder these animals inspired in our ancestors, the hope they inspire in us, and the joy they might still hold for our children. This island that looked, from the heart of the Mendip Hills, like an oasis of interconnected ecosystems, was the site of more losses than we can count. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.In underscoring the concept of basic dignity as being the right of all species and illuminating the idea of an expansive, planetary politics, Malay offers a bright, fierce hope for the future. Although I had a few books published in July on my NetGalley TBR already, I couldn’t resist requesting this one, as it was described thus: “Late Light is the story of Michael Malay’s own journey, an Indonesian-Australian-American making a home for himself in England and finding strange parallels between his life and the lives of the animals he examines”. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. This book is filled with genuinely thought provoking and sometimes quite touching reflections on things like the nature of home, the solace of friendship and community, loss, paying attention to the world outside of yourself, and the plurality of the tragedy taking place under our noses. Through the close examination of four particular ‘unloved’ animals - eels, moths, crickets and mussels - Michael Malay tells the story of the economic, political and cultural events that have shaped the modern landscape of Britain.

Coming to the West Country of England via Indonesia and Australia, Malay gives a newcomer’s view of the British countryside, writing with precision, fascination and humour, picking out tiny details that a local might not even notice thanks to familiarity. One of the things that I found most engaging about this book is the way it sometimes perfectly captures that sense of the sublime that an encounter with the natural world can provoke, and that brief sensation of the boundaries of the self and the world bleeding into one another. During that first year, I also began filling notebooks with words gleaned from books and friends, terms like ‘heath’, ‘upland’ and ‘fen’, or ‘furze’, ‘hart’s tongue’ and ‘goosegrass’, or ‘Icknield Way’ and ‘Fosse Way’. By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file.This book considers the miraculous life cycles of a small group of species — eel, cricket, moth, mussel — and explains in pitiless detail the reasons for their looming extinction at our hands. Late Light is the story of Michael Malay's own journey, an Indonesian-Australian-American making a home for himself in England and finding strange parallels between his life and the lives of the animals he examines. The Somerset Levels is a fascinating area for wildlife, quite different from the rest of the West Country. They were like pebbles found on a beach, shapely and good to hold, and some opened strange vistas onto the past.