The Kindness of Place: Twenty Years in West Cork

In 1990, having spent over thirty years living overseas, Damien Enright returned to Ireland with his family and settled in West Cork. He has since become established in the first rank of Irish nature writers. This beautifully written book, The Kindness of Place, celebrates twenty years in West Cork and follows his acclaimed book, A Place Near Heaven.

Divided into month-by-month chapters, The Kindness of Place describes a calendar of nature and of events in the life of the Enright family and the local world. For the amateur naturalist, there is always something new. The tide washes in and out, bringing its tide-wrack and By-the-Wind sailors; once, it carried a huge whale onto the strand. A fledgling heron, falling from its nest, had to be adopted by the family or it would not survive. The benevolence of nature and of the local people pervades this book, a tribute to the kindness to be found in this place.

In recent years, 'development' came and went, but the character of the local people remains unchanged: the sons and daughters grow to adulthood, as good-natured as their parents. The Enrights, once 'blow-ins', are now neighbours.