Ghostways: Two Journeys in Unquiet Places

This uneven but ultimately pleasing book collects two short, collaborative works from nature writer Macfarlane, Holloway and Ness, both about unusual features of the southern English landscape where, in various ways, humans have left marks on nature for centuries. Ness concerns the Orford Ness, a spit of land projecting out from the coast of East Anglia that was used for much of the 20th century for secret weapons tests. Macfarlane conveys the site’s haunting beauty, but his prose-poem style tends toward the gnomic and obscure (“She is green above ground & she is white below, for she is moss & lichen but she is also fungi & hyphae, slipping through earth as easily as she steps through air & rising up in a riot after rain”). Holloway, written in collaboration with Richards, is far more accessible, about a walk Macfarlane took in Dorset with deceased author Roger Deakin along a holloway, an old term for a narrow, sunken path created by continuous traffic over centuries along a route. Throughout, Macfarlane delights in archaic terminology, such as the alternative names for a screech owl (including deviling, shriek-devil, and howler), while Donwood provides fitting visual accompaniment with his beautiful pen and ink illustrations. Readers who can get past Ness should thoroughly enjoy Holloway. (Nov.)