Personally, I'm not a fan of the style or tone of the writing. It felt too casual (not well edited enough), and too much like a very standard 'journal' (which it probably was before) studded with clichéd expressions. I can't help but compare it to Derek Jarman's journals, and I have a very clear and strong preference for Jarman's. I'd rather have/read Jarman's journals, and Piet Oudolf's books . However, if you've not read either before, then 'In Kiltumper' might be a decent read for you. Also if you like James Rebanks' books about farming, you will like this one (except it's gardening instead of farming, of course).

I didn't know who the authors are but I'm a keen gardener and a story about a garden is something I couldn't miss.
Gardening is spending time, being patient and loving plants and the earth, the authors did an excellent job in describing what is their life in the garden.
There're happy moments, difficulties and issues.
I found their stories and their descriptions fascinating. The style of writing is lyrical at times and they are good storyteller.
It's strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I absolutely loved this book, in which husband and wife Niall Williams and Christine Breen describe a year in their garden in Kiltumper, County Clare. The major events which shape the book are the arrival of two wind turbines 500 metres from their garden, and Christine's recovery from bowel cancer, but the book ranges much more widely than this, looking back on the life they have built together since arriving in Kiltumper, describing the texture of their days through the changing seasons, and reflecting on what sort of future exists for their way of life.

I had read several of Niall's novels before, so was used to the beauty of his writing, which was likewise in evidence here: I can't think of any other writer who could suffuse descriptions of eating a home-grown tomato or washing a woollen hat with such lyricism and grace. However, Christine's voice adds so much to this book (she is also a writer as well as being the chief gardener, and they have co-authored a number of books about their early years in Kiltumper), particularly her affectionate teasing of "Himself" for his occasional mistakes in the garden, which he accepts with good grace. So much of their writing is about each other, and this book is thus a deeply moving tribute to the strength of their relationship and to what they have built together. By hearing both of their voices we also get to know them in a way that wouldn't be possible with just a single voice; it is almost like we have been welcomed into their home.

Like most nature writing, this book is deeply concerned with the state of our planet, the arrival of the wind turbines prompts a nuanced consideration of how "the human and spiritual value of the countryside is too great to be spent simply as a resource for energy." They acknowledge the necessity of renewable energy whilst lamenting the destructive consequences of the wind turbines in their community, such as the demolition of a two-hundred-year-old stone wall to make the road wide enough to transport the turbines - and the fact that these were approved by planners who had never visited Kiltumper. As Niall reflects, "in places like Kiltumper, the future will be much less green for going Green." Niall and Christine show that they are seriously engaged with environmental issues and their their objections to the turbines are not based on NIMBYism but a genuine concern for rural Ireland and its future.

Although nature is the focus of the book, many of the most touching descriptions are of human encounters - from an open-air Mass celebrated in their garden, to the first writers' workshop they hosted, to everyday encounters with their neighbours. These, too, add to our sense of the magic which Kiltumper exerts on all who visit it.

Even though I have very little horticultural knowledge, I found this a brilliant read and would highly recommend this book - thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

I've literally just finished reading this, and feel a little bereft. In the way you do when you've become part of a book and aren't quite sure what to do once it's finished. (The book itself seems to feel this: the year of the narrative ends and the epilogue keeps us there, dipping into the parts of the following year, bringing us up to date. In the nature of a garden, it feels that this really ought to continue forever, and it must have been harder than usual to bring the book to an end!).

Overall? A picture of a garden, a portrait of a long marriage, a meditation on the nature of life and ageing and family. A history - both personal and touching on the wider world. A sense of the deep contradictions of green policy and the state of the world and the climate. A capture of a community, a soaked-in sense of being. I also come from Irish emigre stock, and in a parallel world I would be living in the cottage of my forebears (in Kerry rather than Clare) rather than on a boat in the North of England. This gave me a tiny sense of what that life might have looked like. I won't ever have that experience, but I do (thanks to Brexit) now have Irish citizenship and the right to an Irish passport, so who knows what might happen in the future?

I'm left sure that I will be trying again with kale this coming year, and maybe peas, with a complex structure of canes to keep them up. As with the best of creative non-fiction, this book opens out the sense of a conversation. I want to tell Chris and Niall that I get the canes for my little tiny patch of towpath garden from the overspilling bamboo planted in the garden of one of the neighbouring houses. I will be re-visiting the garden in Kiltumper again, that's for sure.

I have very mixed feelings about this book - some passages were just lovely, and some a bit cringy. The book is organised by month - starting with the New Year until December - with both Niall Williams and Christine Breen writing. Christine's paragraphs appear in italics, and the text otherwise is mostly Niall, which makes the collaboration seem uneven - and Christine's writing feels like footnotes rather than a contribution. It is a shame, especially given the fact I found Christine's writing more enjoyable - she delights in describing flowers, makes her experience very personal and heartfelt, where Niall mostly quotes other writers (Robert Macfarlane is a favourite, quoted every few pages.) Christine is described by Niall many times as an "instinctive gardener" while he portrays himself as the intellectual who likes nature but mostly writing and reading about it, with less practical knowledge. This was repeated so many times that he came across as a vain and pretentious man whose compliments towards his wife as his opposite - someone who feels the earth, and is definitely not an intellectual - passive-agressive. Reading Christine, she definitely seems as educated and knowledgeable as him, and her writing feels more genuine, as well as more pleasant - Niall has a habit of switching from the lyrical to the colloquial and starts every other sentence with "And," or "So," which I found distracting. He seems very aware of this and keeps writing things like "I'm not being clear enough here", resulting in the same ideas being expressed a couple of times because he cannot articulate them clearly.

Despite money being mentioned later in the book, when Niall complains that their revenue is unstable and hard to predict, they both seem somewhat tone-deaf: they moved from New York to Clare, where Christine's ancestors are from, bought the very house these ancestors once owned, "only following a prompting in [their] spirits that [they] wanted to live true to [their] own nature". They describe it as "a purely romantic impulse"with "no thought given to whether or not we had any talent, how we would actually make a living, nor what it would really mean to try and live from words and earth in a rural place on the edge of Europe". At that moment I was reminded of something Chelsea Fagan, (the financial blogger) said - "A lot of things that we think take a lot of courage actually just take a lot of money" (for example, "quitting your job with no backup" or "starting over in a new city") and it would have been nice to see them acknowledge that privileged position.

I also expected illness to be a larger part of the memoir; it does appear every now and then, as Christine has to do a checkup every six months and anxiously waits to know if she really is recovered from cancer; but it feels more like a side note than the essence of the book.

The essence of the book, really, is the wind turbines being installed 500 meters from their house. That's where the book really takes a turn for the worse as Niall and Christine both write extensively (Niall more than Christine, again) about their anger and complain at lengths about the wind turbines and the damage - trees being felled, roads having to be widened, the noise, the ruined landlscape. Anyone can sympathise with that, I doubt Greta Thunberg herself would enjoy living so close to three wind turbines. However Niall Williams writes so much about it that it becomes.... suspicious. Environmental concerns are only brought up in the last few chapters of the book, and while he recognises that green energy is important, he goes on and on about why wind turbines are not a good solution: they cost a lot of energy to make, they ruin the landscape, they are noisy. His solution? Have them all inside at sea, like what has been done in the US, so they are not visible and the noise cannot be heard. He fails to mention the fact that they will still take as much energy and create as much carbon to be made and transported to the sea - so really, the issue is just the proximity to his house, isn't it? It's fine - really, everyone understands that - but the bashing of "green energy" (he dislikes the term - it is not green as it creates a lot of carbon emission to be built and transported - which apparently defeats the point of having them installed) is too constant, too much. When he writes defensively that maybe he is just too old to understand, he seems aware of how he comes across: a boomer who never really thought about the environment and is devastated that the consequences of the crisis are reaching him.
When he describes seeing pheasants while on his walk to pick up some turf to burn in the fireplace, I had to laugh: peat is hardly a green energy, releases tons of carbon dioxide and their use accelerates climate change. When he casually mentions it after spending page after page complaining that wind turbines are not even "green", it's hard to believe this person actually reads about the environment or cares about it.
His rage about wind turbines being so near his house is, again, understanding. But I would have kept that rage for a sassy Tweet and not for 30 pages of my book on gardening.

I could go on but overall, this is a book that made me angry at times - the privilege that they never acknowledge, the hatred for the Green party ("the future will be much less green for going Green"), the poor writing many times - but there are also lovely passages. Christine's descriptions of what she grows are moving and genuine; Niall's recollections of his grandfather and his roses were enjoyable to read and very touching. But the whole book together felt clumsy and unfinished.

This is a gentle book that leads the reader through the seasons. Unusually it is narrated by both authors, each commenting on how the other works, plans and feels.

There's a sense of foreboding however, as a wind turbine is coming and will be erected just 500 metres away from the Kiltumper.

It's a book to read and relax with. It's an evocative portrait of a garden in Ireland where it is anything but easy to grow things.

Generations of gardening is the backdrop for this memoir, the current gardeners of the family home falls to Niall and Christine. Happily married and at total peace with their relationship, families, environment and lives Niall and christine describe the four seasons in the remote west Ireland. However bliss is shattered when the wind turbines arrive, a sign of environmental progress for most, where the actual turbines are placed has an impact on the few. I enjoyed the writing group’s chapter and would love to go on a course there one day. A great deal of information on the various planting and irrigation, not really my thing but found the information so well described I could imagine the garden. If you like gardening in windswept environs then you will love this. I liked the human side of the book, the humour, the family, neighbours, contractors, writers and Niall & Chris. Thank you #NetGalley for the copy to review.

I feel like I came into this story at the end, rather than the beginning. I was unaware that Niall and Christine had written other books about their time in Kiltumper before this one and I just feel I would have enjoyed this so much more had I read the earlier books. Or maybe not. Maybe it would have made their despair at the changes being wrought to the land around them, even harder to bear. I found the book sad. Not in a 'pathetic' sense but in a true sense of being sad. It felt like a winding down and in part an incantation to try and ward off further evil. There is so much here that speaks of loss and regret and looking back and the fear of what the future will bring. The bits about the garden, as in the physical descriptions of the garden and the planting and the work were lovely and I wanted more of that. I fully appreciate that this is not that book that I wanted and if you've read the others it will be good. I just need to go and start at the beginning.