Shiver: the Lessons of Lochs

In this exceptional and joyous memoir, Brigid Lowe swims her way back to life by seeking to plunge into every one of Scotland’s thirty thousand ice-cold lochs. * AS FEATURED ON WOMAN’S HOUR – BBC RADIO 4 After Brigid Lowe’s life is upended, she turns to Scotland’s wild waters for refuge and for reckoning. Drawn deeper by their bone cold comfort, she set herself a challenge: to swim a thousand lochs. And so her adventures begin: stepping into ice and caves and sacred springs, she swims with birds, conger eels and seals, in lochs held in dripping forest, towering mountains and ancient moor, alone and with her children in tow. Immersed in these secret pools, with their vaulting chasms and softer shallows, she tests the line between recklessness and safety, pain and pleasure – and, at last, life and death – discovering new depths of strength, endurance and fluent potential. Shiver is a love-letter to Scotland – its flowers and rocks, myths and legends, highlands and islands – and to its chill waters, which swept Brigid off her feet only to carry her back home again. _______ ‘A book to bring delight to lovers of water in all its forms and manifestations, to wild swimmers and lovers of wildness, gorgeous landscapes and, above all, of Scotland.’ Esther Woolfson, author of Corvus ‘As clear and magical as the Highland lochs and as filled with colour as the Hebridean seas in which she swims.’ Annie Worsley, author of Windswept ‘Luminous, graceful, and immersive... its greatest gift lingers long after the final page is closed, like a long-forgotten call to return to the watery world of our wild selves.’ Victoria Bennett, author of The Apothecary By the Sea WINNER OF THE RSL GILES ST AUBYN AWARD FOR NON-FICTION