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Title: Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides by Adam Nicolson ISBN: 0-86547-667-5 Publisher: North Point Press Pub. Date: 02 June, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.86 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The land owns us...
Comment: Not the other way around. This was the greatest theme I took away from Adam Nicolson's "Sea Room," the story of the three tiny, uninhabited Shiant (say "Shant") Islands in the Hebrides of Scotland, which Nicholson inherited from his father (the famed author Nigel Nicolson, the son of Vita Sackville-West).
Nicolson's approach to describing the islands for his readers resembles John McPhee's: it's an engaging blend of natural history (how were the islands formed?), human history (who lived here and why?), archaeology, and ecology (how do the animals and plants of the Shiants form a whole world?). The difference is that Nicolson's passion for place is quite specific: he loves the Shiants like one loves one's parents, infinitely and irreplaceably. You can't imagine him running off and writing a second book about another place.
Nicolson's prose is lyric and detailed at the same time; despite the length (350 pages and more), the story never flags. At the end of the book, Nicholson defends his continued private ownership of the islands (many feel they should be a public trust); I wasn't convinced, but I respected his strong urge to transmit his love of the place to his son and future generations of his family.
By the way, Nicholson publicly offers the keys to his cottage to anyone desiring to stay there (his e-mail address is in the book); but consider first that rats seem now to be part of the natural ecology of the place. But perhaps that won't phase you (it doesn't phase Nicholson a bit!).
Rating: 4
Summary: a whole lot about little islands
Comment: This is kind of a scattershot book, but interesting and fun to read for all that. Mr. Nicolson is the aristocrat-author owner of the Shiant (pronounced 'shant') Islands in the inner part of the Outer Hebrides, and he wrote the book as a 'love letter' to them. In it he takes up geology, archaeology, history, genealogy, biology, ecology and ornithology, and also considers boat building, shepherding, fishing, folklore and the tragedy of the commons, all in an effort to explain and share his love for the islands; which task, in the end, he manages pretty well.
The book is roughly structured around a year in the life of the Shiants, but Nicolson doesn't let this stop him from ranging wherever his desire leads; which means that while it isn't exactly a page-turner when looked at as a whole, each section is entirely coherent and quite compelling, and the overall structure means they flow into one another reasonably enough. The biggest portion of the book is given over to archaeology, shading into speculative (in the good sense, as practiced by Farley Mowat) history. Nicolson a exhibits strong desire to recreate for his readers the lives of his islands' earlier inhabitants, which also leads him to examine more recent history. Here and there he leans towards overly romanticizing the lives of the islanders, but on the whole he does a wonderful job of conveying the realities of their existence: most strikingly in his account of Campbell family, who lived on the Shiants in the mid-19th century. He also throws in a fair amount of what might be called tangential information--his description of shepherding on the islands and his scale of the edibility of birds eggs were particularly good--which together combines to create a fair picture of the islands; or, at least, the islands as he sees them.
Obviously, the islands themselves are the common theme holding the book together. But also present throughout the whole account, from a derogative cartoon about him that Nicolson includes in the first chapter to his closing ruminations about passing the islands on to his son, is the question of what it means to own the islands, and indeed to own land in general. Nicolson approaches the question on two levels: on the first, he quotes a drunken pub patron who once told him that his shepherd tenants are the Shiants' real owners, and on the second he includes a letter from Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which tried to obtain the islands as a public trust in the '70s. The last chapter of the book includes Nicolson's account of an ongoing discussion about what right he has to the islands and whether they ought to be public property. Nicolson is far from a stereotypical grasping absentee landlord, and in fact he rather agrees with his drunken accuser. He's not convinced, though, that public ownership would be any better for the islands: he feels that 'protecting' them would actually end up attracting more visitors, while at the same time tying management of the islands with layers of needless complication.
And to his credit, Nicolson ends the book with an actual invitation to visit the islands: if you email him, he writes, he'll give you the keys to the cottage. What public trust could provide that? How the scheme will work under his son, who gets the islands in 2005, and under any potential increased pressure from visitors, is open to question; but Nicolson does a good job explaining his position, and the question of ownership provides a tension and center to the book that would otherwise be lacking. Rating: 5 Adam Nicolson will take you on such an intimate tour of these islands that should you ever find yourself there you'll know where to find the fresh water springs, where 7th-century Christians worshipped and which cliffs are crumbling! I love roaming over open land, down creek beds and up hillsides and this book gives me that sense of freedom and wonder. If John Muir could have written like this about the land he loved so much the entire west half of the US would be a National Park. Sea Room is a wonderful, wander full book. Buy it.
Summary: A wander-full book
Comment: Nicolson's style is so natural that I swear I hear his voice as I read. Sea Room is filled with emotion as well as science, both equally detailed, and it is never, ever dull. The author has done considerable research in developing this book - in detail it reminds me of a John McPhee book but with one big difference: Nicolson's passion for the subject jumps from the page. Sea Room is an exceptional mix of science and emotion.
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