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Swimming with Seals

Swimming with Seals

by Victoria Thompson (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2017

    $11.67
Synopsis

Shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize 2018.

This is a memoir of intense physical and personal experience, exploring how swimming with seals, gulls and orcas in the cold waters off Orkney provided Victoria Whitworth with an escape from a series of life crises and helped her to deal with intolerable loss.

It is also a treasure chest of history and myth, local folklore and archaeological clues, giving us tantalising glimpses of Pictish and Viking men and women, those people lost to history, whose long-hidden secrets are sometimes yielded up by the land and sea.

$11.67

Save:$7.84 (40%)

Quantity

1 in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 208
 Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 20 Apr 2017
ISBN 10: 178497837X
ISBN 13: 9781784978372

Media Reviews
'Attentive, astute and beautiful ... I adored it' Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun.
'I finished this book wanting to find a cold lido, or jump into a lake, or walk into the cold sea and stay there for as long as I could stand it, and then do it again' Guardian.
'Wonderfully evocative ... fascinating' The Scotsman.
'Each little dreamlike postcard in this captivating book takes you deeper into the world novelist Victoria Whitworth experienced as a sea-swimmer in the wild waters of Orkney' Sainsbury's Magazine.
'The author's descriptions of the coastline in Orkney and the savannah in Kenya, where she spent some of her childhood, are sharp and original ... enjoy wallowing in the richness of her theological, philosophical and literary knowledge' The National.
'An eloquent celebration of swimming in the cold waters of Orkney and a fascinating memoir' Half Man Half Book.
'A tale of redemption through nature and water's powerful ability to heal' Outdoor Photography.
'Intelligent, wide-reaching memoir ... somehow refreshing, and calming, even in its introspection' The Bookseller.
'Absorbing and thrilling' Ella Foote, Outdoor Swimming.
'The first thing that hooked me into this story was the sea ... An unusual [memoir]' Evening Standard.
'She writes beautifully of selkies and mermaids' Guardian.
'This isn't really a book about swimming at all, but a book about how we are controlled by the voices of the dead; about how the whole of life is necessarily a seance. That's a humbling perspective' Five Books.
'An extraordinary book' TLS.
Author Bio

Victoria Whitworth lives by the sea in Edinburgh. She is a novelist and academic who explores the culture and society of Britain in the Early Middle Ages, focusing on death, burial and memory.