Hidden Nature by Alys Fowler

Buying an inflatable red kayak, horticulturalist Alys Fowler explores the canals of Birmingham while grappling with the repercussions of coming out - after fourteen years of marriage.

The crisis is Fowler’s sexual identity and the fallout of revealing her hidden nature to her husband and to herself.

There is much to be seen from the boat: bluebells, birches, celandine, and coltsfoot. There are mussels and eels in the water, and great pike breaking the surface. There are kingfishers and herons - and beer cans, scrap metal, plastic toys, and industrial waste. And dead things. She races in the Birmingham Canal Network Challenge - a 24-hour narrowboat race and learns about bees, eels, and the industrial past which dug these waterways.

But the tension in the book is never the canal adventure. The crisis is Fowler’s sexual identity and the fallout of revealing her hidden nature to her husband and to herself. The disintegration of one identity and burgeoning of another is the emotional weight of the book. And this is what make Hidden Nature primarily a book about gender identity and only secondarily about urban nature exploration in the English Midlands - despite the beautiful foliage-filigree design of the cover which implies otherwise.

Hidden Nature is an elegantly-phrased emotional reckoning and literary cousin to Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, and Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun.