Line Made by Walking

A young artist in the midst of a breakdown escapes to the Irish countryside in this “cleareyed, beautiful rendering of a woman struggling against despair” (Kirkus).

Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize

A twenty-something artist, Frankie is struggling to cope with urban life—and life in general. So she retreats to her family’s rural house on “turbine hill,” vacant since her grandmother’s death three years earlier. Surrounded by countryside and wild creatures, she can finally grapple with the chain of events that led her here—her shaky mental health, her difficult time in art school—and maybe even regain her footing in art and life.

Reconsidering the relevance of art and closely examining the natural world around her, Frankie begins to pick up photography once more. With “prose that makes sure we look and listen,” Sara Baume has written an intimate and powerful novel that is also a meditation on wildness, community, the art world, and mental illness (Atlantic).

“Fascinating, because of the cumulative power of the precise, pleasingly rhythmic sentences, and the unpredictable intelligence of the narrator’s mind.” —Guardian, UK