Sea Room
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be given your own remote islands? Thirty years ago it happened to Adam Nicolson.
Aged 21, Nicolson inherited the Shiants, three lonely Hebridean islands set in a dangerous sea off the Isle of Lewis. With only a stone bothy for accommodation and half a million puffins for company, he found himself in charge of one of the most beautiful places on earth.
The story of the Shiants is a story of birds and boats, hermits and fishermen, witchcraft and catastrophe, and Nicolson expertly weaves these elements into his own tale of seclusion on the Shiants to create a stirring celebration of island life.
Due to the level of detail, maps and diagrams are best viewed on a tablet.
Reviews
'Exceptionally well done, beautifully written, personal yet panoramic.' Observer
'An extraordinarily outward-looking book…a truly passionate attention to detail…. A love-letter no one else could hope to write so well.' Sunday Telegraph
'A passionate evocation, a compression of observation and anecdote which catches you up in its intelligence as well as its enthusiasm, and fill you with homesickness for a place you've never been to.' Daily Telegraph
'Generous, exuberant and a vividly written narrative…. history, travel-writing and memoir of the best sort.' Spectator
'Sharply observed, a finely written work, one to be savoured, turned over and over like a good whisky.' Sunday Times
About the author
Adam Nicolson is the author of many books on history, travel and the environment. He has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the British Topography Prize and the Ondaatje Prize. He lives on a farm in Sussex.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For his 21st birthday, Nicolson's father gave him some islands among the Scottish Outer Hebrides, 600 acres worth of land that the elder Nicolson had purchased on a whim in 1937. At various times, the Sussex-based writer recalls, the Shiant islands "have been the most important thing in my life," and he has produced a vivid, meticulously researched paean to his "heartland," examining its geology, its flora and fauna, and its history as he reminisces about his own idylls there. The islands, now uninhabited except by the Nicolsons, are outcroppings of grass and rock and stark black cliffs, surrounded by churning waters that are notoriously difficult to negotiate. Until 1901, they were continuously inhabited for thousands of years by an eighth-century hermit, medieval farmers, Irish Jacobite rebels and others documented by Nicolson. The islands are also an important breeding station for birds, and Nicolson observes the comings and goings of geese, puffins and razorbills. Throughout the book, Nicolson explores the troubling idea of ownership; Hebrideans view English landowners with a mix of resentment and derision, and Nicolson acknowledges that his rights to the islands, like those of previous landlords, are morally ambiguous. His mix of scholarship, reflection and lyrical description brings his beloved atolls to life, and the genre-bending book should win some fans among those interested in nature writing and memoir.
