Highway Cottage, 9781802068924
Paperback
Dreamlike village homecoming reveals unsettling secrets lurking beneath idyllic facade.

Highway Cottage

$28.92

  • Paperback

    80 pages

  • Release Date

    6 October 2025

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Summary

Highway Cottage: Poems of a Haunted Homecoming

A dreamlike, unsettling portrait of a riverside village in the heart of rural England, Highway Cottage weaves the story of a strange homecoming.

A young poet travels to the heart of the English countryside - back to the West Country village where he grew up. Descending into the valley where the small riverside community still resides, he finds himself within a dreamlike landscape, peopled by uncanny figures: drone opera…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9781802068924
ISBN-10:1802068929
Author:Ralf Webb
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint:Penguin
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:80
Release Date:6 October 2025
Weight:78g
Dimensions:199mm x 130mm x 7mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

Stunning … a masterful exploration of the past, the present, the political, and the pastoral in all its spectre – Rachel LongThe poems of Highway Cottage embody the intangibility of return. In their midst, to revisit is always to witness anew and, if fortunate, to be renewed also – Victoria Adukwei BulleyHighway Cottage portrays a landscape of irrepressible beauty and disquiet. It’s a collection attuned to the fields and their secrets, indebted to the rivers and the young swimmers who slip into them. Language blooms, unfurls, the imagery stains everything it touches. Rural life is ripe with tensions, and Webb situates himself at its fringes, guiding, prodding, asking – Momtaza MehriPraise for Ralf Webb * - *

Ralf Webb is an ethnographer of the present. He is interested in everyday life in the extreme

– Peter GizziNever less than razor-sharp. With a storyteller’s flair, he evokes a world of shifting terrains … It all feels gloriously, anarchically new – Julia CopusAn important voice in British poetry – Eley WilliamsThis is close-range language, magnifying without prejudice both the beautiful and the hard – Anne Boyer

About The Author

Ralf Webb

Ralf Webb is the author of Rotten Days in Late Summer, which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the nonfiction book Strange Relations, which was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. His poems, essays, and fiction have appeared widely, including in the London Review of Books, Fantastic Man, Granta and the Guardian. This is his second collection.

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