Seven Steeples

By: Sara Baume

Narrated by: Aoife McMahon

One of Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Books of the Year • Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize • Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize • An Irish Times Best Book of the Year

“One of the most beautiful novels I have ever read.” —New York Times Book Review

The acclaimed novel about a couple who, pushing against traditional expectations, move with their dogs to the Irish countryside where they embed themselves in nature and make attempts to disappear from society.

It is the winter following the summer they met. A couple, Bell and Sigh, move into a remote house in the Irish countryside with their dogs. Both solitary with misanthropic tendencies, they leave the conventional lives stretched out before them to build another—one embedded in ritual, and away from the friends and family from whom they’ve drifted.

They arrive at their new home on a clear January day and look up to appraise the view. A mountain gently and unspectacularly ascends from the Atlantic, “as if it had accumulated stature over centuries. As if, over centuries, it had steadily flattened itself upwards.” They make a promise to climb the mountain, but—over the course of the next seven years—it remains unclimbed. We move through the seasons with Bell and Sigh as they come to understand more about the small world around them, and as their interest in the wider world recedes.

Seven Steeples is a beautiful and profound meditation on the nature of love and the resilience of nature. Through Bell and Sigh, and the life they create for themselves, Sara Baume explores what it means to escape the traditional paths laid out before us—and what it means to evolve in devotion to another person, and to the landscape.

An adventure in language

Subtle novel —poetic and brave. Baumé is a unique writer and deserves a place among the best new Irish writers.

Beautiful poem

Were they two? Are they one? Two and the same?
A page turning poem.
Unforgettable.

A meditation

The narration and the words and the images the words create are mesmerizing. There’s no real storyline, and there’s a lot of real life that’s not included in this seeming diary of a quiet Irish countryside life, so it’s not an exciting book, but it’s absolutely lovely

Beautifully written.

Interesting book but not really much story. The language is beautifully descriptive and almost vibrates as you read.

Beautiful

Beautifully read and very poetic writing, well capturing the lonely Irish coastal setting. More mood, less action.

Hoping for something to happen, silly me

I realize it is passé to want things to happen, to
have, like a plot, or something, but a good read does require more than a description of the changing landscape.

Do you like to watch paint dry?

If so, you may enjoy this book. In rating, they ask you to rate Performance. Sure, it was read well, but there was no reason for any nuance of tone or voice throughout since there was no conversation, no drama or any emotion necessary.

Boring

This is the most boring book I’ve read. I should have returned it, but I kept listening to it in hopes that it would get better. It didn’t.