This book is the author Amy Jeff’s journey through the nature described and inspired in medieval texts. While the concept of this book sounded interesting to me as it combined literary, nature and reflective writing, I found it underwhelming once I finished it. It felt as though it only scratched the surface of these texts and their inspirations. I would have enjoyed the author going into more details about the historical facts surrounding these texts, and the significance of the sites being described. The author seems to have a lot of knowledge in this area but the book itself was quite short.

I would recommend this book for those looking to learn more about history but are not interested in heavy non-fiction books. I also want to note that there are some disturbing scene described in the book that may bring some discomfort for some readers.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher with providing me with an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a very welcome chance to get back to 100% coverage of Ms Jeffs' output – the appearance for her American publishers of her debut work must have shown that Storyland was a success for them, despite or of course because of its prodigious Britishness – and a success that matched the junior version when I made it a Children's Book of the Month. What we have is her commentary, her artworks, and her poised expertise when it comes to ancient stories, with quite a different effect than Storyland.

For that was an alternative history of Britain, as writ by myth. This is myth written barely in history, but able to be seen through extant ancient manuscripts and other artefacts. The very first chapter will either sell this to you or turn you off, for the commentary post-narrative does feature a fair bit of reportage and discussion, to a much greater length than the tale. But the tale is a fine one – for all I said about her other book and the stories not really feeling distinctive enough, we can tell from the start our narrator here is a dead woman.

The second piece is of an embittered character, dreaming of entering a Valhalla-like hall of warriors and being accepted. With the final twist we see why that ain't gonna happen. Elsewhere we see the trope of the island that is actually a whale, and thus kills all who moors upon it, and a woman replying to and mimicking the journey of St Brendan. This isn't always perfect – I think a story that needs such explanation as to its cleverness is perhaps a lesser story, and we get several of those. (Also, I got marked down at school for an eight-page "about my story" piece when the story was two pages, so I don't see why I should be alone.)

But this is a surprise, and a welcome one. Its large font and languidly-given riches suggest a gift book almost, and that is what this is. And while it's a very rare person who doesn't go to the routine gift book shelf, but thinks "you know what, he doesn't know he'll enjoy a rewrite of the Exeter Book with reference to other pre-Norman texts and museum-worthy treasures of the time," that is more or less exactly what this is and it's still a hit.

Go figure. And while you're at it go laud the people who first thought this had hit potential. The fact is this seems a sign of how niche can still be popular when it's quality niche. I await September 2024 when her book on saints enters my tbr files.

Great selection and the art is impressive. Fits the book very well. A solid collection. Not sure what else to say.

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC of Wild by Amy Jeffs.

Wild was a wonderful work of art that brought old medieval stories to a new readership.

Enjoyable, but shorter than I would have liked.

"My aim has been to evoke and contextualize an ancient imaginative landscape.", writes Jeffs in the prologue, and that´s indeed what she proceeds to do. The book is short, obviously not meant as a wide or deep analysis of the texts in question, but acting as a sort of a trigger, a motive for our own further investigations into the subject at hand.

The subtitle is unfortunate as the book is not a collection of tales.

There are seven essays, each containing an impression of a story and its, as she says, contextualization – historical and folkloric background, natural history, etymology, mythology, and personal interpretations and reflections based on these...

Stories are retellings of Old English poems from the Exeter Book, of which I knew nothing about before reading Wild, but which, judging by George Younge´s translations, commissioned especially for this book, I would love to read.

And I love the cover! - it´s one of Jeff´s wood engravings, and it´s the first thing that drew me to the book.

This is a gorgeous work of art and words that speculates on ancient stories and lore. Every retelling of a story from the Exeter Book brings new framings and understandings of medieval life and belief into sharp focus, from gender to love to monstrosity to betrayal. It is a treat to read.

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read and review Wild by Amy Jeffs.

Honestly, I'm kicking myself as I write this review; the book expired when I was only 31% through it which is very sad because I actually really liked the book. I love the short stories and the background on where they came from.

Leaving this review because I did just get the audiobook instead to continue on with things!

Wild is a collection of poetry and stories adapted from the Exeter Book (a book of middle English poems and riddles bequeathed by an abbot to his abbey) and other contemporary sources. Accompanying each poem/tale is an illustration or on the audiobook version, a song.

I was meant to download a PDF version and read the book, but I couldn't seem to get that to work, so I purchased the audiobook instead for this review. The author narrates her own book and this is helpful in terms of pronunciation and points of view. She also has a small notes section after each tale describing what inspired her to write it. The songs that accompany each tale are very beautiful and capture the Celtic-Saxon feel of the stories very well.

I enjoyed this book very much, although I wasn't as big a fan of the last tale in the book - Paradise - as I was the other tales. It got a little heavy on the religious imagery for me. I understand that religion and daily life were inseperable in the middle ages, but it still wasn't a favorite. All the other tales were very engrossing and made for engaging listening. I hope the author makes more books similar to this. I would love to check them out as well. 4 out of 5 stars.

Thank you to Netgalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for the advanced reader copy. This review is completely voluntary and all opinions expressed are my own.

I found this quite an interesting concept. The author writes a short piece based on an elegy from the Exeter Book then writes a descriptive piece explaining the cultural stuff. It kind of worked for me but I must admit I liked seeing the original versions of the elegies with their English translations in the appendix. It’s beautifully presented so quite a lovely book.

"'I draw strength from people who, for all their fallibility and the perils of their age, saw in the wilderness a potential for harmony and took action according to their understanding. We can do the same. Our descendants will thank us, a thousand years from now."

I enjoyed this, though I found myself more interested in the commentary than the short stories themselves. The short stories are fine on their own, but ultimately, they feel unsatisfying. This wasn't really what I expected, considering I have read both short story compilations and other folklore collections. Firstly, the book was formatted like it was for children despite clearly being for an older audience. If this book had the typical font size, it probably would have had much fewer pages. The commentary and appendices also took up a lot of the page count, and while I enjoyed those parts, I would have liked to have longer stories, or more of them.

Wild by Amy Jeffs is absolutely stunning

I like to challenge myself with the unfamiliar at times and dived in to Wild with a small amout of trepidation which was swiftly allayed when I saw how Jeffs had sympathetically deconstructed and explained each story without detracting from the original nuances. I felt that I could understand the book on multiple levels, embracing the ancient history of Britain

The woodcut prints are stunning and lend a level of authenticity to the stories being retold.

Jeff's knowledge is a joy to become immersed in and this is a volume to return to over and over again.

I was kindly given this stunning eARC by Netgalley and leave my review voluntarily

I found the premise of this book very intriguing and it mostly delivered on it. Some parts I liked better than others, Earth, & ,Beasts, were my 2 favorite sections. I found the background comparisons very interesting and loved the overall tone of the book.

Following her debut book Storyland, Amy Jeffs creates another tale with magic and mysticism of the natural world of Britain. Wild is a lovely blend of stories, poetry and non-fiction all bringing the reader back to the ancient wilds of Britain. Illustrated with the author's own engravings Wild is a book of 7 essays based on medieval writings and poems. What's included is absolutely lovely but Jeffs makes an awful lot out of very little. Jeffs original pieces are okay, but I gravitate more to the commentary and source material. Because of this I wish the analysis and connections of the works were deeper and better structured.

While it isn't quite what I expected, Wild is an easy winter read that transports the reader to the wonderful natural world of England.

Thank you to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for this eARC!

Note: I received a free unpublished proof of this book, for a limited time, in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.
I went into this book expecting something more historical. This is partly my fault for not reading the blurb, but I also think that the way this book was presented/marketed just doesn’t hit the mark for what readers should expect from it.
This book is essentially a collection of the author’s creative adaptations of poems from the Exeter Book. The Exeter Book is a book of 10th-century poetry in Old English, and the author explains her rational behind the short stories she has written based on its poems. She also went to different locations in Britian to get a feel for the landscape and how it might have shaped the writing of these poems or could be incorporated into her interpretations of them.
Overall, this is a fine idea. It reads well and I think it is interesting how the author imagines the poems might be related to events in teh lives of medieval people. However, the way all of this is framed confuses me a lot.
While medieval English writers certainly lived closer to the land than modern people in an industrialized world, I think it is a stretch to imply that the poems in the Exeter Book are somehow inherently about the land. Furthermore, titling and marketing this book as a book about “nature”—a concept that didn’t develop into its modern iteration until centuries after anything in the Exeter Book was written—does not really encapsulate its essence. This won’t be a perfect comparison by any means, but it’s kind of like if I wrote a book about how authors like Wilkie Collins and Henryk Sienkiewicz write about themes of war, cultural identity, and nations and called it “Politics”. Yes, politics would certainly be relevant to such a work, and parts of it would definitely be about politics, but to imply that the concept of politics itself is the book’s thematic core would be a bit overly simplistic.
The subtitle, “Tales from Early Medieval Britain”, implies that this is a book of folklore. While the author is honest about the stories inspired by the poems being her own invention, I don’t think the book should be titled as if it is simply a collection of existing stories. I think a title like “Tales Inspired by Early Medieval Britain”, “Tales Inspired by the Exeter Book”, or “Tales Inspired by Early British Poetry”. All of those would still catch my attention as a reader and get me interested in reading the book.
Overall, the book’s marketing seems to target an audience that is interested in some vague concepts of “nature” and “old folklore”, and while it concerns both topics it is really its own thing. I think the book should instead have been marketed as a collection of short stories inspired by the Exeter book with the author’s commentary. This book is very good at being that short story collection with authorial commentary, and if it were viewed through this lens it might have an easier time finding its audience.
While there is a great deal of interest in nature and old folklore these days, there is also a great deal of interest in retellings of, interpretations of, and original stories inspired by mythology, fairy tales, folklore, and other old texts. Indeed, I think this book would be *more* successful if it were marketed as such, as I think that fans of Madeline Miller, Genevieve Gornichec, Rosie Hewlett, and the like would eat this right up. I get that people want to write books targeted at the outdoorsy, naturey, cottage-fairy witch TikTok crowd, but the mythology-retellings TikTok crowd is *right there*. I also realize there is a huge market for charming British nature books, if the display tables at Blackwell’s are any indication, but this doesn’t really fit that “mold”. When I want to read a charming British nature book, I want to read some random guy’s poetic documentation of the birds he saw with this binoculars in the two acres outside his house in rural Yorkshire, not a book about poetry.
Other than the title incongruence, I really enjoyed the contents of this book. The author has interesting interpretations of what the poems could have been about, and gives satisfying explanations for how she came up with these ideas and how they connect to actual history and locations. The author also provides the original poems, both in Old English and translated into modern English, so the reader can enjoy the originals and delineate between what was originaly written and what was the author’s invention.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in medieval England and its folklore.

Amy Jeff's retells stories in a way that makes them feel relevant even today, and then dives under the surface to explore the context of culture, history, and religion that brought these tales into being. A beautifully written collection that was both calming and thought provoking to read.

Wild features seven chapters… Earth, Ocean, Forest, Beast, Fen, Catastrophe, and Paradise.

This wasn’t my favourite, it just didn’t personally work for me. After each chapter there was reflection/discussion on the particular chapter you just read but this didn’t really interest me.

Perfect for any folklore and mythology reader.

I really enjoyed how good everything was written in this, Amy Jeffs wrote this perfectly and I enjoyed what I read. I enjoyed the use of the Medieval World in this book.

Dark and glittering tales of magic from the early days of the Middle Ages in England. Really enjoyed this. Will be buying for my library.

I received an ebook copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review.
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The reason why I initially requested this book is because it sounded as though it might be a good one for me to use for a work project. In the beginning, I upheld this opinion, but today as I was finishing it, I changed my mind, since there ended up being less focus on Nature than I would have liked.
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I found the merging of natural history, mythology/folklore, literary studies, and contemporary outdoors narratives to be captivating at first, but as my reading progressed, I became quite bored.
However, the book did cause me to ponder how oral and written tales can contribute to an individual's (or a people's) relationship with Nature. It is also interesting to see how stories from The Bible and other religious texts have shaped secular stories over the centuries.

With some, but minimal, previous reading in Old English poems and riddles, I found this book very delightful. I thought it was very accessible for a wide range of readers, was well paced, and engaging. I really enjoyed the short stories at the beginning of each chapter to give a more narrative view and context of each landscape and poem. Additionally, I thought each chapter was well balanced with narrative fiction, historically relevant topics, and personal observations, It made for a really lovely read!