Description

A stunning love letter to life in Shetland and a wilder way of living by celebrated poet Jen Hadfield.

‘This book has been my friend’ – Amy Liptrot, bestselling author of The Outrun’I was transported’ – KATHERINE MAY
‘A book as exhilarating as a dip in wild winter waters’ – THE GUARDIAN
‘Deeply thoughtful and beautifully written’ – SARAH MOSS
‘A bewitching book’ – THE TELEGRAPH

In her late twenties, poet Jen Hadfield moved to Shetland to make a new life. Here, in a rugged constellation of islands known for their isolation and drama, she found a place teeming with life, where rare seabirds blow in on Atlantic gales, an ancient language thrives, and a close-knit community is the beating heart of an entire world.

In Storm Pegs, Hadfield transports us to the islands as a local, introducing us to the remote and beautiful archipelago where she has made her home, and shows us new ways of living at the edge.

Publisher Review

Storm Pegs perfectly captures the knotting of language and landscape. I was transported. — Katherine May, Sunday Times bestselling author of Wintering Storm Pegs is rich, attentive and beautifully written. Hadfield writes vividly about the tides, the Shaetlan language, and shows a great appreciation for the people and modern life of Shetland. This book has been my friend. I really loved it and I recommend it — Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun Storm Pegs is a deeply thoughtful and beautifully written account of a life centred on making art in a lively island community. Hadfield writes with rare nuance about choosing and building a new life in a place that calls to many of us. — Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater Delightful: at once intricate and effortless, playful and deeply felt. A heartfelt paean to a coldwater Eden. — Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment What a wonderful book. Jen Hadfield just has to turn her languaged gaze to the world and it fizzes to life on the page. One of the most intensely realised accounts of a place – and time in a place – I have read. — Philip Marsden, author of The Summer Isles A gorgeous portrait of a fascinating, ever-changing place, as well as very many other things: friendship, community, creation and self-creation, the cycle of the seasons and the toil and triumph of the elements. I adored it. — Sara Baume, author of A Line Made By Walking This book is brim-full of love for Shetland – for its land and seascapes, for its people and language. Hadfield’s writing is fuelled by unceasing curiosity and attentiveness. It is vivid, lively and fresh — Malachy Tallack, author of Sixty Degrees North In this memoir, written after seventeen years living in this wild, wonderful place, Hadfield reflects on her pristine but often brutal surroundings, where seals and dolphins nose up to the beaches and residents enjoy wild swimming through wintry seas. — GQ, The best books of 2024 Storm Pegs is as much an account of the author finding new personal bearings as a series of magic lantern slides about insular life . . . This is a great, bright birl of a book – thoroughly beguiling. * The Spectator * Hadfield paints Shetland vividly as a place ever-changing. Storm Pegs is a powerful hymn to Shetland and to community, as well as to the awesomeness of nature. This is a bewitching book, tactile and immersive, riven with salt winds, alive with human oddities and loud with the cries of seabirds. Everything glows in the light of Hadfield’s words, from slimy sea molluscs to grand island vistas. * The Telegraph *