Overview

When you are alone, adrift and displaced, how do you find yourself? Set on a small Scottish island, The Water All Around Us is a poignant novel about loneliness, roots and belonging. Recently arrived, crofters' child, Fenn, is troubled by being different and not fitting in. Incomer and marathon swimmer, Jess, is running away from personal tragedy. A young whale, separated from his pod, swims in the wrong direction and embarks on an arduous, heart-breaking journey. All three are at home in the water, but when their lives connect in the sea that fringes the white-sand beaches, their paths converge and collide with disastrous consequences. Under the surface of this thought-provoking novel are messages, carried quietly and bravely by the whale, about the damage we are doing to our oceans.

Full Product Details

9781739177775

Table of Contents

Reviews

'A meditation on loss, longing and belonging.' - Derek Thompson, author of the Thomas Bladen thrillers, Long Shadows, West Country Murder. 'A brilliantly written, magical story about shore and sea and those who belong there.' - Avril Joy, Costa and People's Prize winning author of Sometimes A River Song and The Silent Women. 'The overwhelming energy of the book is hopeful, personified in the reckless, pure soul of the child Fenn. In a book about belonging, and not belonging, and loss, she is the story's beautiful defiant beating heart.' - Anna Caig Read the full review here 'The water all around us is an emotionally moving novel that fills the mind with secrets, stories, and strange songs like a fable or fairy tale. Each of the central characters is rendered beautifully - authentic, empathic, lonely, self-contained and vulnerable. They are skillfully written, and are effortlessly true to themselves and the remarkable landscapes and seascapes they inhabit. The pace of the novel is wonderfully controlled allowing each secret, story and strange song to be revealed in its own vivid colours.' - Jess Richards, author of Snake Ropes, Cooking with Bones, City of Circles and Birds and Ghosts. 'Just as the sea rolls and holds its many dreams and secrets, so the story-telling anchors this book in our hearts.' - Nick Dawson, author of North, Tracks of a Panda, Tigress 'Once again, Lynn Michell gives us an entrancing narrative of the redemptive quality of human relationships, against a backdrop of the natural world and the urgent environmental challenges it faces.' - Jenny Gorrod, Dundee Review of the Arts Read the full review here: https: //dura-dundee.org.uk/2023/09/26/the-water-all-around-us

Author Information

My seventeen books cross-cross genres, a publisher's nightmare. They include a writing scheme for primary schools, Write From the Start (Longman) a book recording the experiences of thirty people with severe Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Shattered: Life with ME (HarperCollins), and the authorised biography of the surrealist painter, Rosa Branson (Linen Press). Two books are close to my heart: White Lies, my debut novel, was runner-up in the Robert Louis Stevenson Award. Spanning four generations and set against the backcloth of the 1950s Mao Mao uprising in Kenya, it tells the story of an adulterous love affair between a soldier's wife and an intelligence officer who understands Africa. The Red Beach Hut is about a fine but fated friendship between two outsiders, a gay man and a misfit boy, who meet on a windswept English beach. Society's warped gaze endangers both of them.I have recently moved, after twelve years in southern France, to a remote croft in the Western Isles. I live in a caravan with views of sea and islands, and look after brown and black sheep.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available