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After Brigid Lowe’s world is upended, Scotland becomes her home. Its icy, wild waters a place of a visceral relief. Baptising herself into this new life, she determines to swim the country’s thirty thousand lochs. To plunge into this landscape in the hopes of gaining a fluid sense of herself and who she might become.
And so Brigid’s loch adventures begin: stepping into ice and caves and sacred springs, she swims with birds, conger eels and seals, across forest and mountain and moor, alone and with her children in tow. And as she comes to know these secretive pools, with their vaulting depths and softer shallows, she walks the line between recklessness and safety, discovering new edges of pain and pleasure, of strength and endurance.
Shiver is a love-letter to Caledonia – its flowers and rocks, its bogs and legends and hills – and to its chill waters, which swept Brigid off her feet only to carry her back home again.
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‘A book to bring delight to lovers of water in all its forms and manifestations... Brigid Lowe inspires us by piercing observation and the indomitability of her spirit.’ Esther Woolfson, author of Corvus: A Life With Birds
'A real cold-lovers tour of the waters of Scotland... Shiver will make you want to get out your maps, pack up your swimming kit, fill your flask, and make plans.' Polly Atkin, author of Swimming the Seasons
'Immersive, insightful and beautifully written... Brigid Lowe invites us to reclaim our adventurous spirit.' Elizabeth Sulis Kim, author of The Book of Beasts: Reclaiming Animal Wisdom
'Luminous, graceful, and immersive... Shiver invites us to loosen our grip on who we have been, and to find our way home... like a long-forgotten call to return to the watery world of our wild selves.' Victoria Bennett, author of The Apothecary By the Sea
About the Author :
Brigid Lowe grew up in a remote Welsh-speaking community on Ynys Môn, with her younger sister and Irish immigrant parents. She now lives with her children in that part of Scotland known as Yr Hen Ogledd – The Old North – formerly joined with Wales in one Cumbric nation. She studied literature at Bangor, completed a doctorate at Oxford, and went on to teach and research at Sheffield and Cambridge Universities. Brigid traces her descent from travellers, circus performers, mill workers and gallowglass warriors. She takes photographs of flowers, forages her food, clambers pinnacles, and swims in ice and caves and bottomless pools.
Her debut novel, The Bloody Branch, the first in a sequence of retellings of the founding Welsh myths of the Mabinogion, will be published by Harvill (PRH), in January 2026.
Review :
‘After a life crisis, Lowe moved to Scotland and found in its icy waters a place of visceral relief. Bracing certainly but also radiating immense warmth, this memoir charts [Brigid’s] quest to swim in 1,000 of the nation’s lochs, and forms a love letter to Caledonia.’ The Bookseller, September Non-Fiction Highlights]
'Immersive, insightful and beautifully written. Shiver is a story of resilience, belonging and quiet devotion. Brigid Lowe invites us to reclaim our adventurous spirit and find rootedness in the natural world.' Elizabeth Sulis Kim, author of The Book of Beasts: Reclaiming Animal Wisdom
'A real cold-lovers tour of the waters of Scotland... Shiver will make you want to get out your maps, pack up your swimming kit, fill your flask, and make plans.' Polly Atkin, author of Swimming the Seasons
‘A book to bring delight to lovers of water in all its forms and manifestations, to wild swimmers and lovers of wildness, gorgeous landscapes and, above all, of Scotland. In her brave and often peril-laden accounts of journeys both actual and metaphysical, Brigid Lowe inspires us by piercing observation and with the indomitability of her spirit.’ Esther Woolfson, author of Corvus: A Life With Birds
'A luminous, graceful, and immersive memoir that asks what it means to trust and embrace change. Written with grace and quiet courage, Shiver invites us to loosen our grip on who we have been, and to find our way home to ourselves. It is a gentle reminder that we do not need to control the water around us, only rediscover our capacity to move with strength and beauty within it. Beautifully written, its greatest gift lingers long after the final page is closed, like a long-forgotten call to return to the watery world of our wild selves.' Victoria Bennett, author of The Apothecary By the Sea
