A Line Made by Walking

Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize

“Baume is a writer of outstanding grace and style. She writes beyond the time we live in.”—Colum McCann

“Baume leaves nothing unturned in this dark and sometimes funny excavation of the human heart.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Fascinating, because of the cumulative power of the precise, pleasingly rhythmic sentences, and the unpredictable intelligence of the narrator’s mind.” —Guardian

Struggling to cope with urban life—and life in general—Frankie, a twenty-something artist, retreats to her family’s rural house on “turbine hill,” vacant since her grandmother’s death three years earlier. It is in this space, surrounded by countryside and wild creatures, that she can finally grapple with the chain of events that led her here—her shaky mental health, her difficult time in art school—and maybe, just maybe, regain her footing in art and life.
As Frankie picks up photography once more, closely examining the natural world around her, she reconsiders seminal works of art and their relevance. With “prose that makes sure we look and listen,”* Sara Baume has written an elegant novel that is as much an exploration of wildness, the art world, mental illness, and community as it is a profoundly beautiful and powerful meditation on life.

*Atlantic

“Baume’s writing is near-faultless.” —Financial Times

“A novel of uniqueness, wonder, recognition, poignancy, truth-speaking, quiet power, strange beauty, and luminous bedazzlement.” — Joseph O’Connor