Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides [Anglais] [Broché]

Biographies are supposed to deal with people, not places, but Adam Nicolson's lyrical new book, Sea Room, is best seen as a biography. Dealing with the geology, history, natural history, sociology, and emotional resonance of the Shiants--a trio of Hebridean Islands between Skye and Harris --Nicolson's book is an all-encompassing characterisation of this remote corner of the British Isles.

Nicolson begins by describing how, inheriting the islands from his father as a young man, the islands have come to have an unusually deep meaning for him. This comes out in his painstaking reconstruction of the geological formation of the islands, of their ancient bronze and iron age settlements, and of the harsh lives of the families that lived here until large-scale economies destroyed traditional Hebridean life.

There is much sadness and anger in Nicolson's account of these changes, but also joy--joy at the richness of life in such a place, and joy that these changes have allowed Nicolson himself to experience the Shiants' beauty. The precision with which almost every inch of the islands' physical and historical identities are described is, literally, marvellous; Nicolson eschews generalities, and writes with a love of detail that is increasingly rare. Although the book is a little maudlin at times, this is only the reflection of Nicolson's own sensitivity to the place. The Shiants are anthropomorphised, becoming a character in their own right, proof that the tiniest place can reflect the passage of time. --Toby Green --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .

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.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Nicolson has what most can only dream of: his own island. Actually, the property consists of three remote Scottish islands, the Shiants, located in the Hebrides and purchased by Nicolson's father through a 1937 newspaper advertisement. The grandson of Vita Sackville-West, Nicolson, who was given the islands with their cliffs, sheep, rats, and birds on his 21st birthday by his father, has written Sea Room as a self-proclaimed "love letter" that captures the character of the place. More intellectually weighty than most travel narratives, Nicolson's book offers as much information about the geological origins of the islands, the seasonal details of the flora and fauna, and the melding of Norse language into the culture as it does about the author's solitary boat rides and peaceful beachcombing adventures. The comprehensive bibliography and index indicate a love and knowledge of the island that goes well beyond that of an occasional visitor or tourist. Nicolson is the islands' resident historian and scientist, and as he prepares to give the islands to his own son, he can do so knowing that his gift is not merely sentimental but substantive. Recommended for all travel collections. Mari Flynn, Keystone Coll., La Plume, PA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

*Starred Review* When Nicolson was 21, his father gave him the tiny Shiant Islands a few miles east of Lewis, the biggest of the Outer Hebrides, and somewhat more miles northwest of Skye, largest of the Inner Hebrides. Nicolson already knew the place well, having spent many holidays there with family and friends, and alone. There is a two-room house near the easiest landing, and Nicolson repaired to it for the year that this rhapsodical tribute records. He conducts us through the months in the Shiants, for each unfolding part of Shiants history and telling of the experts he brought in to see what the place could tell them, which included the shepherds with whom he rounded up the fattened lambs in the fall. He demonstrates that the Shiants were a vital part of several cultures, which became remote only as industrial capitalism centralized enterprises and profits. This history is finely and personally relayed, but what is best in the book is Nicolson's intensely sensual detailing of his sailing of the waters around the islands; of air, rock, soil, flora, and light; of the spirituality historically assigned to the place and which lingers there; and of what it must have been like to live there over the centuries. Magnificent and poetic, this is a literary and ecological masterpiece. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

“Nicolson’s book is an adventure story with Hemingway highs and is also unselfconscious, wonderfully idiosyncratic, and, above all, beautifully written. There are terrifying sea journeys, discoveries of Bronze-Age gold, eighth-century legends, and recalcitrant laird-hating locals, all keenly observed and researched through an intensely personal lens. And I mean personal.” —Geordie Greig, Literary Review

“Nicolson’s chronicle is a fine book. Readers . . . will be duly awed by his delicately layered story.” —Erica Sanders, The New York Times Book Review

“No other book has given me as rich a sense of what makes a small island so revelatory of our life on earth.” —David Craig, London Review of Books

In 1937, Adam Nicolson’s father answered a newspaper ad—”Uninhabited islands for sale. Outer Hebrides, 600 acres . . . Puffins and seals. Apply . . .” In this radiant and powerful book, Adam describes, and relives, his love affair with these breathtakingly beautiful islands called the Shiants. Crowned with huge cliffs of black basalt and surrounded by tidal rips, they are wild, dangerous, and dramatic—with a long, haunting past. Sea Room celebrates this extraordinary place and shares with us the greatest gift an island can bestow: intimate and profound engagement with the natural world.

Adam Nicolson is the author of many books on history, travel, and the environment and a winner of both the Somerset Maugham Award and the British Topography Prize. He lives with his wife and children on a farm in Sussex.