Shortly after her husband’s death, Julia Blackburn became fascinated with Doggerland, the vast once-populated stretch of land that connected Great Britain to Continental Europe thousands of years ago but is now under the North Sea. She felt driven to explore the lives of the people who lived there as revealed through artifacts and the fossil record. In Time Song, she brings us along on her journey, introducing us to the paleontologists, archaeologists, fishermen, and fellow Doggerland enthusiasts she meets along the way. What emerges is a lyrical exploration—part travelogue and part history—and a profound meditation on time and the immensity of the past.
“"Subtle, an interweaving or drawing together of times, juxtaposing the now and the then until the gap contracts . . . Species appear and vanish, cultures develop and are annihilated. It sounds depressing, but this is one of the only books I've ever read that has made me feel better about climate change. It's not that we're not doomed . . . But the end of us doesn't mean the end of existence altogether . . . but if this book convinces me of anything, it's that there will always be more life to come." --Olivia Laing, The Guardian "Lyrical . . . An impressionistic picture of a place that is both gone and yet still there . . . This sweet, sad book will leave its readers meditating on loss and timelessness." -- Publishers Weekly "This is an extraordinary book about time, absence and perception . . .The exploration of the past is an exercise in empathy, a way of becoming conscious of what it is to be human in another time and place. Through tracing this consciousness back to the people who left their imprint on Doggerland, Ms. Blackburn shows us that, in a time of flux and friction, the gathering of uncertainties can bring greater awareness and a sense of wholeness." -- The Wall Street Journal "[Blackburn] creates a lyrical narrative of her journey: deft portraits of the men and women she interviewed and poetic reflections on her discoveries, her husband's death, and the infinity of the past . . . A sensitively rendered chronicle of discovery." --Kirkus Reviews "It is a magical, mesmerizing book -- a book which makes you feel giddy at the thought of the deep gulf of history hidden just beneath your feet . . ." -- The Scotsman "Unconventional . . . [Time Song] is a meditation on the Mesolithic and what people are truly looking for when they turn to the past . . . Ms. Blackburn is a collector with an eye for minutiae. Like an archaeologist's shelf, her writing is filled with detail . . . Arresting . . . The combination of wry observations and personal reflections makes Time Song gripping." -- The Economist "A breathtaking survey . . ." --Literary Review "Julia Blackburn is an ideal guide to such territory . . . Time Song is richly peopled, Blackburn's unflagging curiosity and sharp eye bringing a diverse cast of characters vividly to life . . . She's conjuring for us not merely the facts of Doggerland, but the weight of its omission from our history books, our collective memory and our imaginations." --Financial Times "Beautiful . . . a memoir-cum-meditation . . . [Blackburn] alight[s] on what she finds and hears with a vital clarity and exactness . . . [ Time Song ] is an anatomy of melancholy; but she is often funny, and the eccentricity of the pursuit of the deep past does not escape her . . . Rarely have I read a book in which there is such an entrancingly liquid and easy drift between the metaphorical and the actual . . . It feels both Wordsworthian and Woolfian, accepting the dissolution of boundaries in a dynamic tidal psychic geography that becomes Blackburn's description of the nature of being . . . This book is a wonder." --Adam Nicolson , The Spectator”
“A magical, mesmerising book that makes you feel giddy at the thought of the deep gulf of history hidden just beneath your feet.” —The Scotsman
“Majestic. . . . Captivating. . . . Blackburn’s book on the past is above all a response to the urgent problems of the present.” —The Times Literary Supplement
“This is an extraordinary book about time, absence, and perception. . . . Blackburn shows us that, in a time of flux and friction, the gathering of uncertainties can bring greater awareness and a sense of wholeness.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Gripping. . . . Unconventional. . . . A meditation on the Mesolithic and what people are truly looking for when they turn to the past.” —The Economist
“Blackburn has a talent for envisioning bygone worlds. . . . The book is less about Doggerland itself than about . . . the tantalizing objects, be they fossils or faxes, that can bridge the living to the dead.” —The New York Times Book Review
JULIA BLACKBURN is the author of ten books of nonfiction, including The Three of Us, Old Man Goya (a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist) and With Billie (winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award). She is also the author of the novels The Book of Color and The Leper's Companions, both of which were short-listed for the Orange Prize. She lives in England.
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