The Fish Ladder

'What a delight! The Fish Ladder is a luminous sort of book, beautifully written, darting here and there like a kingfisher over a stream. A beautiful, strange, intoxicating and utterly unique story.' -- Phillip Pullman 'A beguiling amalgam of personal anecdote, travelogue and family history . Norbury attains a wonder-struck prose poetry.' -- The Independent 'In places, Norbury's writing achieves a lovely unobtrusive merging of emotion and description, so that the landscape reveals her feelings and in doing so shares her burden.' -- The Guardian 'Skilfully crafted memoir. A deeply human story that is by turns dramatic, moving and beautifully written. It's a book about both nature and personal tragedy, but it's also about the way the green and healing world around us restores the grieving soul. Norbury is an immensely assured writer, and it is astonishing to reflect that this is her first book.' -- The Mail on Sunday 'Part of the book's charm, and its eventual magic, comes from watching a writer find her voice, and from following a seemingly directionless search as it discovers focus, coalescence, and, eventually, wonder. The ending is reached through twists of emotion that made me cry. The memoirist's challenge, as I was once told while struggling with one, is simple: Give a true account of yourself . The Fish Ladder accomplishes this brilliantly.' -- The Sunday Telegraph