I have come to think of Birmingham as my second home and I loved the description of the area around where I work and of Spaghetti Junction, the gateway to Birmingham for me and many others. The book focuses on the natural and industrial landscapes, the plants and history of the canals that are explored. There is joy and sadness running through the book, with each step of self-realisation acknowledging the cost to others. The book centres around four main characters, Alys, her then husband, her future girlfriend and the West Midlands canal network. What happens when someone who has learned to observe her external world in such detail decides to examine her internal world with the same care?īeautifully written, honest and very moving, Hidden Nature is also the story of Alys Fowler’s emotional journey and her coming out as a gay woman: above all, this book is about losing and finding, exploring familiar places and discovering unknown horizons.The voyage of discovery refers to more than canals, this is also a deeply personal journey that weaves through it the end of Alys's marriage and her realisation that she was in love with a woman. Her book is about noticing the wild everywhere and what it means to see beauty where you least expect it. Leaving her garden to the mercy of the slugs, the Guardian’s award-winning writer Alys Fowler set out in an inflatable kayak to explore Birmingham’s canal network, full of little-used waterways where huge pike skulk and kingfishers dart. ‘Gentle, brave and acutely observant’ Woman’s Weekly ‘This candid book is as much about mapping the heart as it is about mapping the paths of waterways. ‘She writes wonderfully about the species that have carved out a place for themselves amid the discarded shopping trolleys, condom packets and industrial waste’ Guardian ‘Hidden Nature is one of the most thrilling things I’ve read in a long time’ Waterways World ‘Thoughtful and heartbreakingly honest …Beautiful’ Press Association ‘Fowler captures the beauty of the canal’s dishevelled, neglected condition…’ Times Literary Supplement ‘Fowler beautifully exposes her emotional fragility while also celebrating the unloved nature of buddleia, herons and even the water rats who take refuge among the locks.’ i paper ‘An emotional and compelling memoir, that left me inspired, both by her bravery in transforming her life, and by the unexpected beauty she finds along the way’ Countryfile Magazine ‘Fowler’s moving memoir charts her experience of coming out as a gay woman, alongside her journey through Birmingham’s canal networks, mapping both the waterways and the travails of her heart.’ Observer
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