Pastures New (Clare Balding)

The publisher’s presentation

Alex has perfected the art of dodging responsibility during her almost 40 years – until an unexpected letter turns her life upside down.

She’s inherited a crumbling sheep farm in wildest, wettest Wales. This was not her life plan. Not at all.

Now, her closest companion is a stubborn Welsh terrier, she’s speed-reading The Idiot’s Guide to Farming, and her arrival has set the village gossip mill spinning. With the farm near collapse, Alex sets out to uncover the truth behind her mysterious inheritance.

But as secrets surface, Alex finds her heart pulling her in a direction she never saw coming.

Will she pack her bags – or has she landed exactly where she’s meant to be?

My reading

This book is a really relaxing and pleasant read.
Behind a witty writing, beautifully evocative of the Welsh countryside, there is a really sensitive, heartwarming and uplifting story which starts from a difficult point. Alex is loosing her job as a freelance journalist and AI is replacing her. And she inherits a farm without quite knowing why. Through this farm, she discovers the country and how much she loves it there, she discovers secrets about her life that she had no idea about, and she realises that Mandy is the special one she did not even realise she was looking for.
The story brings to light the beauty of the countryside but also how harsh it is to run a farm. There is clearly a lot of admiration in the book for their daily hard work, the struggles to make ends meet, and the dedication that goes into a farm.
I really liked the central characters and the support they give each other. Alex finds a strong community at and around her new farm, and is quickly able to contribute too, and it really highlights the power of human connection, even when people do not have much to offer apart from themselves.
There are horses and many dogs in this book. Jiffy is one of the central dog characters in the book and although I am not a dog person, I thought if I had a dog, he would definitely be one I would like.
I really enjoyed the story and the atmosphere of this book. I hope Clare Balding will come back soon with another one.

I read this book partly through the audiobook and I enjoyed the fact that it was read by Clare Balding herself. You can also listen to her talking about her book, the inspiration that went into it, and more, in this Times interview.