SONIA’S BOOK by Bridget Penney

I acquired Sonia’s copy of Fraser Darlingʼs book in 2010 when my cousins, sister, and I were going through Soniaʼs house following her death. From one of her glassed-in bookshelves, the spineʼs distinctive artwork caught my eye. When I put my hand in to grab it, it was immediately apparent there was something odd. Turning it over, I realised the book contained enclosures. It had been used as a flower press. Between its pages were eleven sheets of specimens, each sheet masked off with two pieces of neatly arranged blotting paper. All the sheets were titled in pencil: ‘Aviemore—May 1961’.

Sonia Campbell Penney was a professional gardener, keen botanist, and the author’s aunt. Her ‘book’ is a copy of Natural History in the Highlands and Islands by F. Fraser Darling, interleaved with eleven sheets of plant specimens, guarded by blotting paper, which Sonia collected around Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands in May 1961. Functionally, if sporadically, annotated with plant names and, occasionally, places of finding, these sheets might be interpreted as a form of nature writing or a holiday diary almost without words. Sixty years on, Bridget Penney asks what a close, though thoroughly unscientific, consideration of these unmediated traces might reveal.

‘In the making of Sonia’s Book nothing was deemed insignificant: a dab of Sellotape, a pencil mark, the alignment of blotting paper, the emergence of a thought or memory. This is not, thankfully, a botanist’s book: hesitancies, doubts, and gaps in knowledge have an equal place alongside exquisite descriptions of the specimens. Here the whole which is recorded encompasses all that can be captured through the filter of the writer’s gaze and mind. It is a superb act of close looking and preservation according to the application of the greatest care possible.’
–> Caroline Clark

Bridget Penney was born in Edinburgh and now lives in Brighton. Her previous books are Honeymoon with death and other stories (Polygon, 1991), Index (Book Works, 2008), and Licorice (Book Works, 2020). Her stories, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in print and online magazines: among them gorse, Snow lit rev, 3:AM Magazine, and Pamenar Press Online Magazine.