The Heart of the Valley - Softcover

Nigel Hinton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0094707502 ISBN 13: 9780094707504

Publisher: Constable, 1991

Synopsis

Set in the English landscape of the Kent countryside, this beautiful and extraordinary novel follows the life of a hedge sparrow - from winter to summer – as its nest and its young are ravaged by the intrusion of a young cuckoo as well as by the thoughtlessness of humankind. It is a story of catastrophe and survival. From the rapture of mating, the patient nest-building, the laying of tiny sky-blue eggs, the book shows the world through birds’ eyes. It will forever change the way you look at trees and hedges and the creatures who live in them.

About this title

About the Author:

Nigel Hinton was born in London and educated at Dulwich College. He is the author of over twenty books and short stories and has written for TV, film, radio and theatre. Prior to his career as a writer, he worked in advertising and as a teacher, during which time he wrote his first novel for teenagers. Aside from writing, Nigel’s interests include playing the guitar and the ukulele, walking, bird watching, cycling, music, movies, drawing and supporting Charlton Athletic Football Club through thick and thin. He is married and lives in East Sussex.

From Publishers Weekly:

Though it bears some initial resemblance to Richard Adams's Watership Down, this charming novel eschews the fantasy of anthropomorphized animals with speaking parts. It draws its drama from the daily life-and-death struggles among the commonest of animals, in this case, a family of dunnocks, a small wood sparrow native to England. We come to see the world through the eyes of a nameless female dunnock as she endures her first winter, mates for the first time and, with her mate, raises her first brood. The birds are threatened by forces of naturestorms, predators, an unfriendly cuckoo who lays her eggs in the dunnocks' nestas well as the threats that modern man has devised, wittingly or unwittingly. The dunnocks' story is interpolated with that of the human residents of the small Kentish Valley, but it is the valiant female dunnock who captures our interest and, inevitably, our admiration.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Constable
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0094707502
• ISBN 13: 9780094707504
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 236