I recently finished reading The Great Level, by Stella Tilyard, about the drainage of the Fens. I thought she described the disorientation the fens can create well - and imagined them as they were prior to drainage with what felt to me some accuracy. Your thoughts here also made me realize that almost all my short stories that have a supernatural element to them are set in Norfolk or Cambridgeshire, something I hadn't consciously done; they just seemed to belong there.
As per @Deborah Vass, I too came here via @India Knight.
Liked this piece very much. I dig flat landscape…Denmark, Holland; but there is something particularly evocative and hauntingly disturbing about the east of England: as you set out in your piece. And, if I am reading a story set there (or evoking) it adds a layer of connection, of meaning.
I sometimes wonder whether such landscape places us in a curious isolated exposure to nature and ourselves, to feeling, that softer, more rounded hilly cliffy boscy places don’t.
Yes, I think you’re right that such landscapes can leave us feeling exposed and vulnerable. Perhaps that heightens that part of ourselves that looks for threat, and finding none, we instead seek the supernatural, or at least, in more realistic mode, the hidden truths of the place.
I wonder whether that innate threat-searching and what we do when we don’t actually find it lies at the base, or part of the base, of the ghost story (all rather MR James and Fen-influence in the safety of his rooms at King’s).
I am so pleased to have discovered this through India's Knight's post. You draw the landscape so well.
Thank you, Deborah. That’s lovely to hear. Thanks also for reading.
I tried to quote from it in my restack, but there was a glitch. It is a beautiful piece.
I recently finished reading The Great Level, by Stella Tilyard, about the drainage of the Fens. I thought she described the disorientation the fens can create well - and imagined them as they were prior to drainage with what felt to me some accuracy. Your thoughts here also made me realize that almost all my short stories that have a supernatural element to them are set in Norfolk or Cambridgeshire, something I hadn't consciously done; they just seemed to belong there.
I haven’t come across Tilyard’s book. I’ll look out for it.
Just finished Masud's book yesterday. Fascinating, as are these landscapes.
It’s on my list to read this summer or autumn.
Hope you enjoy it
As per @Deborah Vass, I too came here via @India Knight.
Liked this piece very much. I dig flat landscape…Denmark, Holland; but there is something particularly evocative and hauntingly disturbing about the east of England: as you set out in your piece. And, if I am reading a story set there (or evoking) it adds a layer of connection, of meaning.
I sometimes wonder whether such landscape places us in a curious isolated exposure to nature and ourselves, to feeling, that softer, more rounded hilly cliffy boscy places don’t.
Yes, I think you’re right that such landscapes can leave us feeling exposed and vulnerable. Perhaps that heightens that part of ourselves that looks for threat, and finding none, we instead seek the supernatural, or at least, in more realistic mode, the hidden truths of the place.
I wonder whether that innate threat-searching and what we do when we don’t actually find it lies at the base, or part of the base, of the ghost story (all rather MR James and Fen-influence in the safety of his rooms at King’s).