REVIEWS
Finding meaning and healing in flat landscapes
In A Flat Place, Noreen Masud journeys to different flat landscapes in the UK that compel her. In terms of genre, this book might be called a nature memoir: each chapter engages intimately with the natural world, from the Fenlands to the Orkney Islands, and even the stillest, flattest, and quietest revelations are inextricably tied to the environment.
But equally, Masud pushes against determined traditions of nature writing. The expansive space of this memoir is an invitation to collapse boundaries and make room for experiences and bodies that are often erased from British history, and in doing so, Masud also voices the realities of this nation’s colonial violence. Alongside these various quests to find flat landscapes and beautifully articulate the ecosystems she encounters – her writing is terrifically precise and lyrical – Masud explores the often elided histories of said landscapes, her own pains and bodily sensations, the fractures, joys and limitations of her relationships and,
