Nature Fiction?

[Ingrid]

Good morning to everyone!

I'd love some help on this. I'm studying English, and for my coursework (the language of persuasion) I'm choosing the significance of nature. I have poetry and non-fiction up to my chin but I need fiction - I read a lot, however I can't remember one piece of fiction I've read that directly relates to my coursework theme.

Has anybody read any books they can remember that had a lot of nature in them? Fiction? Maybe books with a subtle undertone pertaining to conservation, etc.? Or even just novels with graphic descriptions that seem to illuminate nature as opposed to overshadow it?

If anyone knows of Henry David Thoreau's 'Walden', it would be a fiction version of that (man seeks solitude in nature).

All the best - and thanks for anything...it will help, trust me.

 

[novella]

I recommend Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams Stories. These are collected fictional stories (based somewhat on his life) of a boy growing up in the northern Minnesota woodlands. Also, Jack London's Call of the Wild. Both of these are really man in nature, not nature alone, but hard to find fiction that isn't focused on man. I would not consider Animal Farm, for instance, to be about "nature" at all, more about human nature.

You could also look at The Clearing (set in the bayou of Louisina) and even Moby Dick.

There are also the typical teenage-problem books like Where the Red Fern Grows and My Side of the Mountain, which I think are transparently moralistic but do show people in nature. A better book written for young people is The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White.

 

[MEYERTREE]

two that i can remember are "I Heard the Owl Call My Name", and "Two Against the North".
Unfortunately, I can't remember the author of either one.

 

[funes]

You might want to try Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels , Big Sur , or maybe Dharma Bums. I'll see if I can think of some others.

 

[Ingrid]

Thank you novella, MEYERTREE abd funes - that's fantastic. I appreciate your help.

 

[magemanda]

Just in case you're still after anything...

Elyne Mitchell wrote some children's books about wild brumbies in the Australian outback, and nature features quite extensively in these books. Try 'The Silver Brumby'.

 

[funes]

Of course, there is always Conrad's Heart of Darkness in which the jungle is virtually a character. I've also heard Edward Abbey has written a couple of books (The Monkey Wrench Gang, etc.) that are conservation minded.

 

[Ingrid]

Funes - I just bought Abbey's 'The Monkeywrench Gang' and it's perfect, exactly what I was after. Thank you!

Novella - just bought Hemingway's 'Nick Adams Stories' - looking good so far!

About the Conrad book: has it stopped being published? Because it seems to be really hard to find. At least, in the UK. Maybe I didn't try hard enough. I'll have another look now.

Thanks to all of you, you've helped loads. Take care!