Dawson, Holly: The Smell of Our Skins

Faced with the possibility of losing her mind, a young mother urgently sets about recording her life. Using a series of archetypes - mother, daughter, dancer, lover, girl - she explores her childhood and adolescence, her family legacies, the places that made her, the joys and struggles of raising two children on her own, her fears, dreams and most intimate desires. Her purpose is twofold: to understand how the pieces of a life come to make a whole, and to leave something behind for her two sons. The result is a powerful memoir that serves as a manual to live by - and a brilliant exploration of what gets passed down from one generation to the next. The action moves primarily between Cornwall in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the East Sussex countryside in the present day. Holly writes beautifully and evocatively about our connection to nature and the land, and its relationship to personal histories.