Summary
A dreamlike, unsettling portrait of a riverside village in the heart of rural England.
Highway Cottage weaves the story of a strange homecoming. A young poet travels to the heart of the English countryside - back to the West Country village where he grew up. Descending into the valley where the small riverside community still resides, he finds himself within a dreamlike landscape, peopled by uncanny figures: drone operators and hunters; half-familiar friends; local historians, and bra…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781802068924 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 1802068929 |
| Author: | Ralf Webb |
| Publisher: | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Imprint: | Penguin |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 80 |
| Release Date: | 7 October 2025 |
| Weight: | 78g |
| Dimensions: | 199mm x 130mm x 7mm |
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What They're Saying
Critics Review
Stunning … a masterful exploration of the past, the present, the political, and the pastoral in all its spectre – Rachel Long
The poems of Highway Cottage embody the intangibility of return. In their midst, to revisit is always to witness anew and, if fortunate, to be renewed also – Victoria Adukwei Bulley
Highway Cottage portrays a landscape of irrepressible beauty and disquiet. It’s a collection attuned to the fields and their secrets, indebted to the rivers and the young swimmers who slip into them. Language blooms, unfurls, the imagery stains everything it touches. Rural life is ripe with tensions, and Webb situates himself at its fringes, guiding, prodding, asking – Momtaza Mehri
A compelling, stylishly rendered portrait … Webb is a scrupulous and gifted writer, with a knack for phrase-coining and an undercutting ‘elegant atonality’ – Declan Ryan * Irish Times *
Praise for Ralf Webb * - *
Ralf Webb is an ethnographer of the present. He is interested in everyday life in the extreme
Never less than razor-sharp. With a storyteller’s flair, he evokes a world of shifting terrains … It all feels gloriously, anarchically new – Julia Copus
An important voice in British poetry – Eley Williams
This is close-range language, magnifying without prejudice both the beautiful and the hard – Anne Boyer
About The Author
Ralf Webb
Ralf Webb is the author of Rotten Days in Late Summer, which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the nonfiction book Strange Relations, which was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. His poems, essays, and fiction have appeared widely, including in the London Review of Books, Fantastic Man, Granta and the Guardian. This is his second collection.
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