A dual timeline story following the quest of Daisy Laverock to Nepal to solve the story of her disappeared great-great aunt, botanical artist Violet Mackenzie-Grant, The Sky Beneath Us by Fiona Valpy takes place as the Covid pandemic begins. Daisy is divided from her family at home and is forced to confront the unknown.Scotland 1927. Against the wishes of her family, Violet enrols at the Edinburgh School of Gardening for Women where two significant things happen. She discovers a wonderful talent for painting botanical illustrations, and she falls in love. These two things combine and she finds herself in Nepal, deep in the mountains, where in learning to survive she also learns how to live. I found Violet’s story captivating and would have happily spent the rest of the novel with her.
Scotland 2020. Daisy is in Nepal planning to travel in the footsteps of her distant relative Violet whose story has become lost to her family. In Daisy’s bag are some of Violet’s plant journals which tell part of the story; Daisy’s objective is to discover the whole truth. When international travel is closed, Daisy finds herself Isolated in Kathmandu. Deciding to continue with her plan alone Daisy, like Violet before her, is stepping into the unknown. Alone, anxious, worried for the safety of family at home, she meets a father and son who offer to guide her on foot to the village of Phortse. Her difficult journey is leavened by occasional texts from her mother and two daughters in Scotland, and oldest friend Jack who is sailing a yacht across the Atlantic.
In her darkest moments, Daisy turns to Violet’s journals for inspiration. Little does she know how closely her journey will coincide with Violet’s experience.
The story juxtaposes the limitations placed on women’s lives in the 1920s, with the movement restrictions placed on everyone around the world during the Covid pandemic. In The Sky Beneath Us, these reach from the west coast of Scotland to Nepal and encompass all nations. In her time of need Daisy, like Violet before, finds empathy, generosity and friendship around her.
The Sky Beneath Us is full of wonderful descriptions of the Himalaya, its traditions, its spirituality, nature, botany and most of all the Sherpa people. This is a story of isolation and beauty, loneliness and togetherness, grief, despair and hope. The solutions found by Violet and Daisy, named as the flowers, are similar in their simplicity, their resilience and their hope.
Only when I read the Author’s Note at the end of the book did I realise that The Sky Beneath Us is linked to an earlier Valpy book, the only other one by this author that I’ve read, The Skylark’s Secret.
Read quickly, it is Violet’s story and her discovery of exquisite Himalayan flowers that stays with me.

Here’s my review of another Fiona Valpy novel:-
THE SKYLARK’S SECRET

If you like this, try:-
‘Thin Air’ by Michelle Paver
‘A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom’ by John Boyne
‘The Cottingley Secret’ by Hazel Gaynor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SKY BENEATH US by Fiona Valpy @FionaValpy https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-90j via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-