MARK TURNER wallows in the virtuosity of Swansea Jazz Festival openers, Simon Spillett and Pete Long
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Thin Places
Solace for troubled soul in Ireland’s natural world
THE INSPIRER: poet Paul Muldoon
[Alejandro Arras/Creative Commons] 
PAUL DONOVAN recommends three new books that explore the human relationship with nature
Doomed adolescents, when the missing person is you, classic whodunnit, and an anti-capitalist eco-thriller
WILL STONE takes a ticket to indie disco heaven, but misses the rarely performed tunes
Reviews of new releases by Jens Lekman, Big Thief, and Christian McBride Big Band
TOM PIERSCIONEK recommends a remarkable series of interviews with those few and brave Israeli citizens who refuse to do military service
KERRI NI DOCHARTAIGH’S Thin Places comes in on a tidal wave of nature books. Alarm at the speed of destruction of the natural world has set many writers to work and many publishers to spot a market.
Described as “a mixture of memoir, history and nature writing,” Ni Dochartaigh in this, her first book, turns to wild places and animals as a form of psychic escape.
It is the traumatic legacy of the Northern Ireland Troubles that creates the constantly unsettled fugitive, finding balm in the wild swimming she loves, in rivers, lakes and seas flowing through what she calls “thin places.”
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