Fish Ladder

'A beautiful, strange, intoxicating and utterly unique story' - Philip Pullman'The memoirist’s challenge ... is simple: “Give a true account of yourself”. The Fish Ladder accomplishes this brilliantly' - Horatio Clare, Sunday Telegraph'A beguiling amalgam of personal anecdote, travelogue and family history … Norbury attains a wonder-struck prose poetry' - IndependentSHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Katharine Norbury was abandoned as a baby in a Liverpool convent. Raised by loving adoptive parents, she grew into a wanderer, drawn by the beauty of the British countryside. One summer, following the miscarriage of a much-longed-for child, Katharine and her nine-year-old daughter Evie decide to follow a river from the sea to its source. But a chance circumstance forces Katharine to the door of the woman who gave her up all those years ago. Combining travelogue, memoir, exquisite nature writing, fragments of poetry and tales from Celtic mythology, The Fish Ladder is a captivating and life-affirming story about motherhood, marriage, family, and self-discovery, illuminated by the extraordinary majesty of the natural world.

Beautiful and brave ... A modern Greek myth, What a delight! The Fish Ladder is a luminous sort of book, beautifully written, darting here and there like a kingfisher over a stream. A beautiful, strange, intoxicating and utterly unique story , The Fish Ladder is truly compelling. Its diverse mix of nature, travel and personal history combines to produce a moving journal of one woman's endeavours to walk from dark into light. Warm and touching, its impact lies in its simplicity and emotional power, This is an unusual memoir leading from the grief of a death to the shocking discovery of a birth. The fluid narrative, with its tributaries and false trails, its reflections of dream-like memories and focus on indiscernible destinations, seems to follow the rivers along which Katharine Norbury loves to travel. She has written a magical and most original first book, The Fish Ladder is a beautiful book. An exquisite example of ‘new nature writing’. The scattered fragments of pain and loss and loveliness are bound together into a coherent whole. A generous, moving book and extraordinarily well written too

Katharine Norbury trained as a film editor with the BBC and has worked extensively in film and television drama. She is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA programme at UEA. The Fish Ladder is her first book. It was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and was a Telegraph Best Book of the Year 2015. Katharine was chosen as the Observer’s Rising Star in non-fiction for 2015. She lives in London with her family.@kjnorbury