No.175

The last six weeks, a list:

1. Travelled my body from Ireland to Scotland to south west UK and then back to Scotland, consequently tired but the main objective of moving house was achieved and will eventually be less tired I’m sure

2. Turned into a creature that mainly all day every day paints over the alarming wall paint colours chosen by the previous occupant of this apartment—the ceilings are too high to be reasonable

3. We saw a treecreeper dancing up the larch outside the building—so small! so white-bellied! so purposeful!

4. In an email to the Penguin marketing team I mentioned that it felt as if the entire world needed a giant rest and I’m still thinking about this

5. At the end of each lane at the swimming pool the lifeguards neatly stack two foam floats for people to use if they wish; this morning I noticed a very tiny spider on a single strand of web between the two floats at the end of my lane and wondered whether the spider knew it was so close to all that water

6. For an in between week we were woken up daily at first light by the morning chorus of a peacock and I do not in any way recommend this

7. People are very good, people are very terrible, as such I don’t often know how to feel about people

8. You can’t always bear look at the news

9. The landlord and landlady who own this building run both the local butchers shop and the local nail salon and the combination of this is fascinating to me

10. I have spoken with a dearest friend multiple times now about the significance and importance of gnocchi

11. Mountains are closer to me now and I can sort of hear them breathing when I wake up in the mornings

THE BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT PART:

A little over a year ago—April 4th 2021 if you want an exact date—I looked out of a cold window in Ireland and signed the contract for the book that was always and has since turned into Everything, Beautiful.

One manuscript and two hundred and twenty-four painted pages later I’m back living on my home island in Scotland and the book will be published on August 9th in the US by Penguin—while it is the strangest most peculiar and devastating time for so many people, I’m actually glad beyond belief to be giving people a book about the beauty of everything.

It is a deceptively urgent and important task to find our way back to the beautiful things, and Everything, Beautiful unpicks our outdated and pervasive modern notions of what beauty is and reforms it into something more personal, something more diverse—into the kind of beauty that only wants the best for you.

From the New York Times best-selling author of Eating the Sun and Lost in Translation, a gorgeously illustrated love letter to everything that is beautiful, and a manifesto for those who are struggling to remember or recognize what beauty is.

My hope is, of course, that you will be able to purchase a copy of the book for yourself, but even more than this my hope is that you can purchase a copy for someone else—I believe it remains one of the tenderest things to give a book to someone, and to offer someone Everything, Beautiful is likely to say: I know this world is so hard and cruel sometimes, and I know it has certainly been hard for you, and I’m giving you this book to let you know that you are beautiful within this beautiful world, and that you must try to never forget this.

(If you are able to, pre-ordering the book hugely helps as it sends a clear message of interest to the publisher in my work, informs booksellers of support for the title, and helps to shape bestseller lists. Alternatively you can also request that your local library pre-orders the book in for you—libraries are so desperately lovely.)

You can read more about Everything, Beautiful here.

THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:

Paintings by Brighton-based artist Sophie Wake. To me these are both unnerving and comforting, though I am unsure of why.

“All around us things tried to announce their true nature.”

Jenny Offill, Weather