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Sea Bean

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This beachcombing path takes her from the Faroese archipelago to the Orkney islands, and the Dutch island of Texel. A spectacular book, with a gorgeous slow, sad pace, full of quietly vital information. Sally seems to know just the right way to tell beautiful stories about quiet things. For me anyway, it's an instant classic of nature writing -- Sara Baume Sally's search for a sea bean begins not long after she moves to the windswept archipelago of Shetland. When pregnancy triggers a chronic illness and forces her to slow down, Sally takes to the beaches. There she discovers treasure freighted with story and curiosities that connect her to the world.

There she discovers treasure freighted with story and curiosities that connect her to the world. The wild shores of Shetland offer glimpses of orcas swimming through the ocean at dusk, the chance to release a tiny storm petrel into the dark of the night and a path of hope. SEA BEAN is a coastal treasure. Its hard-won attentiveness shows the wonder and vulnerability of our interconnected oceans, wildlife and people. In Sally's writing, beachcombing - an old island pursuit - is modern, revealing and restorative. The next time I am at the shore I will have a deeper appreciation and curiosity -- Amy Liptrot This is in many ways a lovely, interesting and well written book... which sometimes set my teeth on edge. Frequently this was to do with odd repetitions of words, although it starts on the beautiful cover with the title and the image (it's not a sea bean). I think you'd be disappointed not to encounter lots of local language in a book like this but it felt weird to have 'bonxie' italicised every time it appears... I rather suspect more people now know these challenging birds as bonxies than as great skuas. I felt that 'palindromic rheumatism' was repeated in full almost like an incantation - this being the unusual form of arthritis which she develops following the birth of her second child and which constrains her activities.Sea Bean is a beautifully brave book about finding one's place in an uncertain world. For Sally Huband that place is the Shetland shoreline, where her extraordinary beachcombing finds in times of limiting illness connect her to the greater waters of wild wonder, ecological grief and the possibilities of community. It's a profoundly illuminating journey through the seas that ultimately encircle us all. But what makes this journey so special is that its movement comes from waiting; it emerges from the great patience and care needed to uncover the stories that are washed ashore from elsewhere. Sea Bean will change the way you look at the world's coasts -- Julia Hoffman A WATERSTONES NATURE AND TRAVEL BEST BOOK OF 2023LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT NATURE WRITING PRIZE 2023'Modern, revealing and restorative, a coastal treasure' Amy Liptrot'Like its talismanic title, Huband's voice is distinct and singular. There are some sour paragraphs on breastfeeding and contamination of human milk which I felt should have been rounded out (although the (almost certainly deceptively) simple and abrupt words "I didn't enjoy it" perhaps explain why that was not the choice that was made in the writing or, apparently, the research). I was surprised too at the gaping hole where the controversies around the grindarap should be in the section on the Faroes (I don't think the word is even mentioned). Sally Huband is from "Port Zed" as I knew it, growing up a little further down the coast/estuary from her. By stages she ends up in a more stereotypically sea connected Shetland, not on some writerly whim or personal therapeutic endeavour but for the prosaic "moving with husband's job". The wild shores of Shetland offer glimpses of orcas swimming through the ocean at dusk, the chance to release a tiny storm petrel into the dark of the night and a path of hope. This beachcombing path takes her from the Faroese archipelago to the Orkney islands, and the Dutch island of Texel. It opens a world of ancient myths, fragile ecology, and deep human history. It brings her to herself again.

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