Bodil Malmsten

Lively, enchanting and deeply serious...Abounds in wonderful descriptions of her intimate relationships with plant-life, and in seascapes...Extremely funny

Hilarious, heartwarming and movingly honest. This is a book about self-exile and creation that only a poet could write

I loved the comments about English gardening as preposterous, and her ability to conjure so much out of so little without ever leaving her garden... Truly wonderful

Lyrical and pithy, full of wry humour, yet weightier than most fat tomes, The Price of Water in Finistère is a book about the past and the state of the world we have created... I adored it

'In the same way as there's a partner for every person, there's a place. All you have to do is find the one that's yours among the billions that belong to someone else, you have to be awake, you have to choose.' 
 
With this conviction in mind, acclaimed Swedish writer Bodil Malmsten abandons her native country at the age of fifty-five and settles in Brittany. 
 
At the heart of this memoir is the conviction that the happiness to be found in Finistère will not allow itself to be, cannot be, expressed in writing. Embroidered around this seeming paradox are poignant, outraged and thought-provoking observations on the widest range of subjects: how not to buy plants, the elicit pleasures of bargain-hunting, the misery of writer's block, social democracy, racism, tulipomania, the stubbornness of bank managers, the controlling of moles and slugs, death, political hypocrisy, the delights of wild weather. Malmsten's passion and humour shine through every episode she describes, however minor, offering the reader a window onto a solitary life at once touching, thought-provoking and, occasionally, hilarious.

The Price of Water in Finistère

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Bodil Malmsten

Praise for The Price of Water in Finistère

Lively, enchanting and deeply serious...Abounds in wonderful descriptions of her intimate relationships with plant-life, and in seascapes...Extremely funny

Hilarious, heartwarming and movingly honest. This is a book about self-exile and creation that only a poet could write

I loved the comments about English gardening as preposterous, and her ability to conjure so much out of so little without ever leaving her garden... Truly wonderful

Lively, enchanting and deeply serious...Abounds in wonderful descriptions of her intimate relationships with plant-life, and in seascapes...Extremely funny

Hilarious, heartwarming and movingly honest. This is a book about self-exile and creation that only a poet could write

I loved the comments about English gardening as preposterous, and her ability to conjure so much out of so little without ever leaving her garden... Truly wonderful

Lively, enchanting and deeply serious...Abounds in wonderful descriptions of her intimate relationships with plant-life, and in seascapes...Extremely funny

Hilarious, heartwarming and movingly honest. This is a book about self-exile and creation that only a poet could write

I loved the comments about English gardening as preposterous, and her ability to conjure so much out of so little without ever leaving her garden... Truly wonderful

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