A Line Made By Walking
Ireland

A Line Made By Walking

by Sara Baume

Mental Health Literary Fiction 2017

Summary

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.

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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
2017
Author
Sara Baume