Shiver: the lessons of the lochs

"I have never been drowned, but I have had a wave lift me off my feet, tear me off course, sweep me away somewhere I did not mean to go, and force me to search for a new way back to the shore – and fear, for a moment, that perhaps there might not be any way at all. I waded into the waters of my new life with no intention but to win myself a home and find myself in it again. That was the plan. I felt that the time was approaching when I might need to feel myself again, and feel myself at home. " 

A woman swims her way back to sanity after her life is violently upended, by seeking to plunge into every one of Scotland's thirty thousand lochs. SHIVER is the result: a lifetime's quest, an ode to the Scottish landscape, and a siren song of the healing properties of water. Refreshment, resilience, resistance. 

"I swam because I would not be cowed. I have a problem with authority." 

A single mother of three. A Welsh resident of Scotland's capital with Irish parents. A keen observer of nature, literature and myth. An obsessive lover of loch living. Brigid Lowe is a singular woman and a singular writer. And she has written a book that is surely the most beautiful ode to wild swimming since Roger Deakin's Waterlog. Immersing herself and her reader in cold water poetically and psychologically, Lowe floats her knowledge of the history and the geology, of the mythological landscape and the physiological and psychological journey, towards us, and we accustom ourselves to its clarifying crispness and to having our breath taken away by her writing. 

‘A book to bring delight to lovers of water in all its forms and manifestations, to wild swimmers and lovers of wildness, gorgeous landscapes and, above all, of Scotland. In her brave and often peril-laden accounts of journeys both actual and metaphysical, Brigid Lowe inspires us by piercing observation and with the indomitability of her spirit.’ Esther Woolfson, author of Corvus: A Life With Birds 

'Brigid Lowe writes about Scotland’s lochs as places of pause - and in doing so,
offers readers one too.'

Freya Bromley, author of The Tidal Year

'Shiver is an immersive experience into the healing potential of water. From the first
page, Brigid's words will carry you until you are surrounded by dramatic Scottish
landscapes and feeling the freezing water on your skin. It is a book about nature's
power to bring us through the most turbulent times and, if we let it, its ability to save
us from ourselves. Allow Shiver to show you how Scotland and its lochs can heal our
deepest emotional wounds.'

Charlie Bingham, author of The Life-Affirming Magic of Birds

‘Shiver is a beautiful exploration of both familiar and hidden waters, and the natural
world. In a delightful melding of both memoir and nature writing with prose as clear
and magical as the Highland lochs and as filled with colour as the Hebridean seas in
which she swims, Brigid Lowe has created a wonderfully evocative and passionate
book. Shiver will live long in the minds and hearts of readers from across the UK.’

Annie Worsley, author of Windswept