Inextricably Entangled: The Porosity of Human and Non-Human Bodies in Sara Baume’s A Line Made by Walking

Abstract

It has been argued that many contemporary writers display growing levels of ecological awareness in their writing and that the depiction of nature in Irish literature is changing. This is certainly true of Sara Baume’s 2017 novel A Line Made by Walking, which takes place in the Irish countryside and is deeply concerned with the non-human. This article draws upon new materialist and ecocritical theory (Karen Barad, Jane Bennett, Stacy Alaimo and others) to examine Baume’s treatment of the non-human landscape in the novel. The mind / matter, human / nature dualisms are among the novel’s core concerns. Baume emphasises the protagonist’s inability to identify with her body and depicts her feelings of alienation from non-human beings in vivid detail. This article highlights how, on a symbolic level, the author undermines these dualisms by offering a poetic depiction of the subtle connections and entanglements that bind the character’s body to the non-human landscape. Baume’s writing focuses on ordinary processes of exchange between human and non-human bodies, highlighting the crucial – albeit unnoticed – material connections that underpin the world we live in.