A Country Wife

Sep 22, 2024 4:33 AM

Author:Lucy Pinney

A Country Wife

Twenty years ago a young Londoner named Lucy arrived in the Dorset countryside as a rather bemused bride. She knew nothing of the great outdoors and blithely agreed to spend her honeymoon harvesting. Her rural education was to be a fast and frantic one.

This is the story of a woman who began rural life in romance, raised a family in the farmyard, was left by her husband just as her name was being made as a columnist for the countryside, and found a whole new life for herself in the hills and valleys she had come to love.

Inspired by Lucy Pinney's popular columns for The Times, this bewitching bucolic romp is a glorious combination of Bridget Jones, I Don't Know How She Does It and Gervase Phinn.

She became a farmer's wife for love of the farmer, but can Lucy's relationship with the countryside survive two decades, divorce and more mud than she ever dreamed possible?

Reviews

Irresistibly funny

—— Woman & Home

An intriguing and thought-provoking book

—— New Statesman

Despite her expertise, McGonigal's book is never overly technical, and as with a good computer game, anyone, regardless of gaming experience, is likely to get sucked in

—— New Scientist

McGonigal is persuasive and precise in explaining how games can transform our approach to those things we know we should do. McGonigal is also adept at showing how good games expose the alarming insubstantiality of much everyday experience. McGonigal is a passionate advocate... Given the power and the darker potentials of the tools she describes, we must hope that the world is listening

—— Tom Chatfield , Observer

McGonigal brilliantly deconstructs the components of good game design before parlaying them into a recipe for changing the offline, 'real' world'

—— Literary Review

She brilliantly links the growing scholarship on happiness to the gimmicks and tricks that commercial game designers devise to engage their febrile audiences

—— Pat Kane , Belfast Telegraph

I found as I read through her book I had already begin [sic] to feel empowered and make notes on the games I'd like to look into. Gamers can change reality - McGonigal proves that...

—— Keri Allan , Engineering & Technology

Lively and combative ... dauntingly well-informed ... injects a welcome dose of common sense into an issue that has been absurdly lacking in it.

—— John Preston , Sunday Telegraph

Piercing...convincing...timely.

—— Ben Hammersley , Financial Times

[M]ore than rewards a respectful reading, not only for the author's impressive knowledge of the internet toolbox...but because of his ability to relate such technological gadgetry to the increasing challenges that are being posed to entrenched authoritarianism

—— James M Murphy , Times Literary Supplement

Selected by the New York Times as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2011

—— New York Times

The year's most unusual travel book

—— Tom Chesshyre , The Times

[An] eye-opening and hugely enjoyable book

—— Daily Telegraph

Written in a delectable prose that scatters flashes of poetry over a sardonic undertow of social comment, Edgelands is a lyrical triumph. On Britain’s grotty margins, the duo trace “desire paths” to find beauty and mystery in the rough darkness on the edge of town

—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent

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