Noreen MasudReviews

A book that explores one person’s life by recording her response to the spirit of (flat) places.
For me, the descriptive writing about landscapes resonated more, as I have been to several of those places, whether in passing, like Morecambe Bay, or on holiday, like the Orkneys and Orford. What drew me to the landscapes was probably the coast and sea, which remind me of where I was from.
I enjoyed the occasional literary quotations, mainly poetry where I knew the author’s name and little else, and these felt complementary to Masud’s reflective memoir, rather than intrusions.
The tangential approach to Masud’s experience (which she labels complex post-traumatic stress disorder, for want of a better description, noting that she is less interested in the diagnosis, or the term, than in the particularities of the way I experience my life) is interesting for someone who understands little of the feelings expressed.
Some of the descriptions of Masud’s childhood reminded me of the first section of Kamila Shamsie’s novel, Best of Friends, and the descriptions of place are excellent.

The reflective consideration expressed through the majority of the book was marred for me by some of Masud’s homogenising anti-white racism, which lumped all white people together, and excluded any other people from that grouping of entitlement (for example, page 139 about Newcastle Moor and 2020 pandemic lockdown). I can understand the anger she may feel, but not its grouping of all white British under this “umbrella”.