Rootbound: Rewilding a Life

· Canongate Books
4,0
1 review
eBook
368
Pages
Eligible
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About this eBook

'Breathtakingly beautiful' i
'Tender and wholehearted' Helen Jukes

LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR IN FINANCIAL TIMES AND I

When she suddenly finds herself uprooted, heartbroken, grieving and living out of a suitcase in her late twenties, Alice Vincent begins planting seeds. She nurtures pot plants and vines on windowsills and draining boards, filling her many temporary London homes with green. As the months pass, and with each unfurling petal and budding leaf, she begins to come back to life.

Mixing memoir, botanical history and biography, Rootbound examines how bringing a little bit of the outside in can help us find our feet in a world spinning far too fast.

Ratings and reviews

4,0
1 review
Erica Spinks
20 May 2020
On the whole, I enjoyed this book although there were way too many mentions of millennials' angst, which I found tedious. There is some beautiful writing in this memoir. The author can certainly shape sentences that are a delight to read multiple times and I found myself lingering on her descriptions of plants and how they form the underlying motif of her life. The historical anecdotes were interesting, especially to me as a reader unfamiliar with London. The tendrils of today are always intertwined with those of the past. Healing was the theme of the memoir, not just the healing of the author but also that of society. I felt hopeful at the end of the book and that's a great way to feel.
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About the author

Alice Vincent is Features Editor at Penguin Books, having previously worked as a writer and editor on the arts desk of the Telegraph. After teaching herself to garden in 2014, Alice started to share her adventures in urban gardening through Noughticulture, a newsletter and Instagram account, as well as in a column for the Telegraph. She has since written for Gardener's World and Gardens Illustrated, appeared on Gardeners' Question Time, collaborated with Hunter, Finery, Monsoon and Seedlip, among others, and hosts workshops and a YouTube channel for Patch Plants. Her first book, How To Grow Stuff, was published in 2017. Rootbound was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. She lives in South London.

@noughticulture | @alice_emily

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