RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR

Idiosyncratic tales of mariners, adventurers and the odd dilettante, here is an exquisite read, stuffed with dark myths and eerie legends, written with poetic descriptions. It is a watery book by the prize-winning author of Leviathan and The Sea Inside. Hoare goes in pursuit of human and animal stories of the sea, people enchanted or driven to despair by the water, accompanied by whales and birds and seals, familiar spirits swimming and flying with the author on his meandering odyssey from suburbia into the unknown. He encounters drowned poets and eccentric artists, modernist writers and era-defining performers, wild utopians and national heroes, famous or infamous, all surprising and sometimes fatally linked to the sea. This is a shape-shifting world that has never been certain, caught between the natural and unnatural, between human and animal, time, space, gender and species become as fluid as the sea. Running through the author's experiences and reminiscences of Moby Dick, Billy Budd and the Tempest, Lord Nelson and Wilfred Owen are his experiences of swimming in the sea, a daily ritual for him. 402pp in well illustrated hardback edition.