**'A subtle, moving celebration of place and connectedness . . . The
Grassling brings the sounds, smells and sights of the countryside alive
like few other books. Burnett stretches the limits of prose, infusing it
with poetic intensity to create a powerful, original voice' PD Smith,
Guardian
**
What fills my lungs is wider than breath could be. It is a place and a
language torn, matted and melded; flowered and chiming with bones. That
breath is that place and until I get there I will not really be
breathing.
Spurred on by her father's declining health and inspired by the history
he once wrote of his small Devon village, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett delves
through layers of memory, language and natural history to tell a
powerful story of how the land shapes us and speaks to us. The
Grassling is a book about roots: what it means to belong when the soil
beneath our feet is constantly shifting, when the people and places that
nurtured us are slipping away.