“What would a novel look like if it was written by someone who sang to the forest and believed it sang back?” asked Paul Kingsnorth (Call of the wild, Review, 23 July). A writer who comes close to that is George Sand in her romans champêtres set in her beloved region, Berry. In La Mare au Diable (The Devil’s Pond), for example, the pond and the forest play an active part in the story, though the humans are still the centre of interest. She doesn’t quite give human attributes to the natural features, but the peasants (the good ones at least) who inhabit the landscape are so in tune with it that they form an integral part of it and share its moods and secrets. It’s not quite what Kingsnorth is after, I think, but her books show how humanity and landscape interact at a deep level, a spiritual one.
Philip Pendered
Tonbridge, Kent
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