- 3/5
- 289 pages
- First published June 1, 2023
Three stars means ‘I liked it’, which is more than fair for this book. The book is a personal memoir of the author Stowe, who uses this book to share her love for the sea with us. The personal anectdotes are cleverly woven into the structure of the book. The structure consists of seven chapters, each named after a creature of the sea; fire crow, sperm whale, human, wandering albatross, humpbag whale, shearwater, and barnacle. Stowe uses these chapters to teach us about the lives of these animals, but she also craftily uses these animals as analogies for different stages of her life.
We follow her life’s journey chronologically through various episodes – her health challenges, her desire to be close to the sea, and her study to become a marine biologist.
Although the structure of the book is creative and well thought off, the links between the personal life and the wild life some times feel a bit too meager. For some chapters if feels too much as if one sentence is being used to string both pieces together. I think it would’ve benefited to book if these two sides of each chapter would been more interwoven. The result we’re left with in the current state sometimes feels like wikipediaesque descriptions of animals, alternated with very personal, almost tumbleresque anecdotes of her life. This especially rings true for the first half of the book, the second half of the book felt much more natural. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Stowe grew into her own writing style towards the latter half of the book, or perhaps it’s because I simply only caught onto the style later into the book.
Anyway, the parts where she’s living out of her van or living on various research vessels were very inspiring and made me want to live a life like that as well. Close to nature, observant, contributing to the scientific field.