MAGIC, MERLIN AND A QUEST FOR PEACE
Wanderland Jini Reddy Bloomsbury Wildlife £16.99 ★★★★★
Afew years ago, broke, bereaved and emotionally adrift, Jini Reddy decided to spend a year searching for magic. She had a hunch that the British landscape might help heal her heart and soul, if only she knew how to look and listen to it properly. This, she admits, makes her sound like a bit of a hippy, whereas actually she’s a London-based journalist who has never had the slightest desire to go to Stonehenge.
In this funny, touching book, we follow Reddy as she attempts to track down ancient springs, labyrinths and even the magician Merlin.
At first everything goes wrong, and she spends a lot of time tramping across Britain in heavy drizzle feeling slightly ridiculous. Her discomfort is only increased by the fact that she is of Indian heritage. Could it be that she is not able to tune in to a culture that is not entirely hers? ‘People I meet in the countryside often look at me a second longer than they need to,’ she explains.
In time, though, something rather extraordinary happens. Reddy stops feeling so anxious about whether she’s doing things right and starts simply to trust her own judgment. When her GPS doesn’t work, she follows her instincts about which road to take. Instead of feeling self-conscious about looking different, she starts talking to strangers. Rather than trying to make magic happen, she concentrates on what is occurring under her very nose. And, she finds that whichever road she chooses, it always turns out to take her where she wanted to go. Once she stops sulking about the rain, she notices a rainbow has appeared in front of her.
There are moments where you could be forgiven for thinking that Reddy has an overromanticised view of the landscape and she never seems to understand why locals sound sceptical or bored when she turns up at hotspots such as Lindisfarne (above, left) and starts over-sharing about her search for magic. But at the same time there is no doubting her sincerity and we are left with the sense that Reddy really has made contact with something deep within herself that feels entirely new and special.