Seven Steeples
Ireland

Seven Steeples

by Sara Baume

Nature & Landscape Literary Fiction 2022

Summary

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.

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About the author
Sara Baume
Sara Baume

Sara Baume is an Irish novelist and visual artist born in England in 1984 and raised in County Cork, Ireland. She studied fine art before completing a master’s degree in creative writing at Trinity College Dublin. Her debut novel, Spill Simmer Falter Wither (2015), won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Her second novel, A Line Made by Walking (2017), was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, while her nonfiction book Handiwork (2020) was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. Baume’s writing is celebrated for its lyrical prose, close observation of the natural world, and exploration of solitude, human relationships, and the rhythms of everyday life. Her third novel, Seven Steeples (2022), was shortlisted for both the Goldsmiths Prize and the International Dylan Thomas Prize. In 2023, she was named one of Granta magazine’s Best of Young British Novelists. She lives in West Cork, where she continues to work as a writer and visual artist.

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Details
Published
2022
Author
Sara Baume