Twelve Moons: The most beautiful and inspiring memoir you’ll read in 2023

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We were almost invincible, our tribe, and I became used to deflecting questions about our family, and why we looked a little different…’

Twelve Moons: A year under a shared sky – HarperCollins

This is a beautifully written memoir, following a woman's timeline through the moon cycles as she come to terms with her family's changing dynamic, how the she copes with varying aspects of her children's needs, her own needs and re-discovering herself and her freedom. This is a debut memoir that will particularly resonate with anyone who has had their life smashed apart and needed to dig deep, just to keep going. In Caro Giles’s case that’s the reality of divorce and the everyday needs of her tribe of four daughters. Given that she is writing so close to the traumas and challenges, there is a rawness in Twelve Moons that makes for challenging reading at times. But you will soon see that love and tenderness permeate every aspect of the lives we read about. Written with intelligence - a blend of lightness, elegance, and even the elegiac, Twelve Moons immerses you in the Northumbrian landscape, with excursions to other quiet places. This is not the life Caro Giles envisaged - an important thread of the read is to see how she adapts to dramatically changed circumstances simply to make things work… to get through the days. In these hours when the world is sleeping, I feel invincible. I am a mother of course, but I am also the promise of my own future, of who I can become. As I sit and watch the shadows cast from the candles, I see myself dancing, skirt spinning, hair caught in the wind, and I know that a better version of me is emerging .’ When I stand and stare up at the moon, I can imagine kindred spirits doing the same, and I feel less alone.’There is such poetry to this book; such grace in the way Giles writes of her past; her children; her fears; her hopes. Here is a woman who knows what it means to sit with her own experiences — those that rattle us and leave us changed — and not shy away from the invitation to transformation such things carry in their wake. I feel humbled to be let in on this year of her life; a year that affected some members of our communities in ways that perhaps others were not quite aware of. Carers were placed in positions that no-one should ever have to be put in. I watched from my own position of relative ease as friends fought for the respite they so desperately needed; for even very basic support for their children; for people to simply listen to, and trust them, when it came to the small people for which they were caring day in, day out. Somehow the darkness soothes me, this mother who has birthed four daughters, and must now raise them in a world that has revealed itself to be harsh and relentless. I worry about how I can show them magic and calm, when they have already seen cruel and unfair.’ Lavi pa fasil. Life is hard.” A stone’s throw from hotels and a paradise of beaches, fifteen-year-old Noemi lives in the slums of Mauritius, where ends are met by whatever means necessary. This includes working alongside her mother as a maid at the wealthy De Grandbourg house nearby, where an encounter with a boy changes the course of her life.

Twelve Moons | Caught by the River | Caught by the River Twelve Moons | Caught by the River | Caught by the River

A memoir told over 12 moons. A newly single mom and her 4 daughters (including one with specific needs) navigate their small town lifestyle with lots of nature hikes, singing, occasional quarantines, and ocean swimming. Sometimes the use of candles and their mystical power is a bit too much, but this mother's fortitude is incredible. Adam Henson is a farmer and presenter. He runs Cotswold Farm Park in Gloucestershire, which pioneers rare breed conservation and was opened by his father Joe in 1971. Television credits include Countryfile, Lambing Live, Coast and Inside Out. His latest book ‘Two For Joy’ looks at countryside superstitions and folklore. We’re very excited to welcome writer Caro Giles to celebrate the release of her debut book, Twelve Moons: A Year Under A Shared Sky.I loved that the Full Moon each month was a focal point. How important it was to find that familiar glow, sometimes in amongst deep cloud, sometimes a bright summer night sky...it was a constant in an ever changing and evolving world. Addington and Ellis argue for a noble cause, but Crewe, an editor at the London Review of Books, does not allow them to be idols. They can be jealous, selfish and lustful, obsessing over intellectual arguments (the works of Walt Whitman and the ancient Greeks feature often) rather than considering how their choices will affect their loved ones. This complexity of character makes The New Life an adroit novel of ethics. “Her face injured him with its familiarity,” Crewe writes of Catherine, Addington’s wife. “‘I did not marry for this,’ she said.” The cycle of the same routines we all go through, even when big things change, we still carry on doing the same daily things with the same people. Navigating single parenthood, advocating from her girls and herself - an endless battle to be heard - is isolating and exhausting. Yet we see, she is gravity to the four girls in orbit around her, her own anxiety waxing and waning over the months, as the landscape around them and the turn of the seasons become her refuge.

Twelve Moons: A Year Under a Shared Sky by Caro Giles - Goodreads

I shared this book with a good friend, a mum like me whose everyday mothering strays from the conventional. There are plenty of us out there, raising anxious, poorly, neurodivergent children; dealing with schools, agencies and well meaning people who just don’t understand. I told her that reading memoirs like this make me feel less alone, in sisterhood with others who tread the wild pathways too.

To hold our children close, as the worlds both outside and inside feel increasingly threatening; confusing; overwhelming? I don’t think I’ve ever met a creative woman who wasn’t into the moon. This book is, at its core — a love story between a woman; a creative; a mother — and the moon. It is also a telling of the way life can be shaped by circumstances outside of our control; impacted on by people, events and things we have no way of influencing. More so, though, it is a story of how one person — perhaps particularly a mother — holds, within their busy, tired hands – the power to change the world; to take a dark time and make it shine. Award winning composer Peter Raeburn’s work has ranged from films such as Sexy Beast to adverts including Guinness Surfer. Peter’s forthcoming album Recovery is based on his personal experiences after having life-saving brain-surgery.

Twelve Moons: Finding strength on the edge of nowhere

We hope you will join us, and Caro, Thur sday 19 th January here at FORUM Books, The Chapel, Corbridge.Over the course of the year, the moon becomes her fellow traveller through dark times, and companion through joyful ones - and even when the sky is wreathed in cloud, the moon is still felt in the pull of the tides. TWELVE MOONS follows the lunar calendar, each chapter sharing a month and a moon, and shows the simmering power that lies in our often hidden daily lives. A dazzlingly honest memoir that while never turning away from the awkward truths of life, also shows how love will flourish if we can only find a space for ourselves. MyHome.ie (Opens in new window) • Top 1000 • The Gloss (Opens in new window) • Recruit Ireland (Opens in new window) • Irish Times Training (Opens in new window) Twelve Moons is a book about finding yourself, your voice and a sense that even in the dark of the night, we are never truly alone.