Sara Baume

Bell and Sigh are a young couple who decide to abandon conventional life and retreat to a remote house in the Irish countryside with their dogs. Leaving behind the city, their friends, and their families, they build a quiet world of their own, shaped by daily rituals, changing seasons, and the rhythms of the natural landscape. Nearby stands a mountain they are told offers a view of seven standing stones, seven schools, and seven church steeples. They promise to climb it, but year after year, the mountain remains unconquered. Spanning seven years, Seven Steeples follows the couple as their lives become increasingly intertwined with the land around them. With lyrical prose and a keen eye for the overlooked details of ordinary existence, Sara Baume explores solitude, intimacy, and the uneasy boundary between freedom and isolation. It is a contemplative novel about stepping away from society to discover what it means to build a life—and whether withdrawing from the world can ever truly bring us closer to ourselves.

In her twenties and struggling to find her place in the world, Frankie retreats from urban life to her late grandmother’s empty house in the Irish countryside. An aspiring artist, she feels increasingly disconnected from her ambitions, her relationships, and herself. Surrounded by fields, abandoned objects, and the quiet presence of wild animals, she begins photographing dead creatures she encounters along her walks, turning these unsettling discoveries into an attempt to make sense of life and death. As Frankie observes the landscape and revisits memories of her past, the ordinary details of rural existence become a way to examine grief, anxiety, and the uncertainty of adulthood. A Line Made by Walking is a contemplative novel about the fragile process of recovery and the difficulty of finding meaning when familiar ideas about success and happiness no longer seem convincing. With her characteristic attention to nature and overlooked details, Baume explores the uneasy relationship between artistic ambition, emotional vulnerability, and the desire to begin again.

Ray is a solitary, middle-aged man who has spent most of his life isolated from the world. When he adopts One Eye, a small, scarred dog with a troubled past, the two unlikely companions begin to build a fragile life together. Both are outsiders, accustomed to being misunderstood and keeping their distance from others. But when an unfortunate incident turns their quiet existence upside down, they leave their coastal village and set out on the road, travelling through the Irish countryside. Told in an intimate, unconventional voice addressed to the dog, Spill Simmer Falter Wither traces a year through the changing seasons. Sara Baume combines lyrical descriptions of the natural world with a moving portrait of loneliness, vulnerability, and unexpected companionship. This tender yet unsentimental novel asks whether two damaged souls can find belonging in one another when the wider world has little room for either of them.