These Envoys of Beauty by Anna Vaught

Welcome to Halfman, Halfbook for my stop on the Blog Tour for These Envoys of Beauty by Anna Vaught and published by Reflex Press.

About the Book

These Envoys of Beauty is writing straight from the heart. Over twelve essays, Anna Vaught uses her relationship with the natural world to explore themes of loneliness, depression, and complex and sustained trauma within the family home, issues that shaped her early life and continue to have a far-reaching impact decades later.

Vaught writes about how she oriented herself to the natural world and lived within it while growing up in a rural home; about wishing trees, talking streams, and her early knowledge of plants, animals, and botanical names; about her passionate relationship, even when very young, with foraging and what was edible, how things smelled, licking the rain from leaves, drinking, growing, and cooking. She writes about how nature fed and feeds her imagination, and how it gave her hope of something different beyond the world she experienced as a child and young person.

About the Author

Anna Vaught is an English teacher, young people’s mentor, Creative Writing teacher and author of several books, including 2020’s novel Saving Lucia (Bluemoose) and short fiction collection, Famished (Influx).

Her shorter and multi-genre works are widely published in journals, magazines, anthologies and the national press. She has been a Bookseller columnist and still writes regularly for them, while she is currently a columnist for Mslexia. Her second short fiction collection, Ravished, was published by Reflex Press in 2022, and 2023 will see four books: memoir, These Envoys of Beauty (Reflex Press), new novel The Zebra and Lord Jones (Renard. UK and commonwealth; Zebra is currently on US submission), plus The Alchemy, her first book about writing.

Saving Lucia will be published in Italian by Milan’s 8tto edizioni as Bang Bang Mussolini. She is a guest university lecturer, tutor for Jericho Writers, super-nerd, volunteer with young people, mental health campaigner and has recently established the new #Curae prize for writer-carers with industry-wide support. She works alongside chronic illness and is a passionate campaigner for mental health provision, including in the publishing industry.

My Review

Slowly people are learning to reconnect with nature. Whether it is forest bathing, meditation or wild swimming, it has helped numerous people deal with the stresses and strains f modern life. For some people that connection has been a lifeline for almost all of their lives. Anna Vaught is one of those who have sought comfort in the world around her away from a horrid childhood and parents that barely loved her.

To have depression is, in my experience, to experience things through a glass darkly

In these twelve short essays, she takes us back from some of the trauma that she suffered as and child and into adulthood, and the methods and techniques and places that she used in trying to heal herself and her mind. She coped with all that that happening by examining in almost forensic detail the world around her, discovering that gorse flowers taste of coconut, smelling the spicy scent of a cowslip as she lies alongside it and burying her head in violets trying to shut away the world.

What you do not know until you grow up a bit more is that the world is full of weirdos like you: water lovers, chuggers in the mud, wailers in the field where the cows have been. That is an encouraging thought

Vaught is honest and open in her writing and this means that this is not the easiest book to read, but it is so worthwhile. There are lots of painful memories in here; it is bad enough reading about them, let alone imagining what it must be like to live through what she did. But there is also hope in here; each chapter is an exploration of her emotions and feeling as well as outlines on how she coped and got through it all. Might not be for everyone, but for those looking for a glimmer of light in a bleak place, this book may have some of the answers that you need.

I never wanted the answers: I wanted questions so big that you could not possibly find answers

Don’t forget to visit the other blogs on the blog tour

Buy this at your local independent bookshop. If you’re not sure where your nearest is then you can find one here

My thanks to Anne Cater of Random Tours for the copy of the book to read.