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Sea Room by: Adam Nicolson

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Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Release date: 17th June, 2002
Media: Paperback

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Editorial Review

Biographies are supposed to deal with people, not places, but Adam Nicolson's lyrical new book, Sea Room, is best seen as a biography. Dealing with the geology, history, natural history, sociology, and emotional resonance of the Shiants--a trio of Hebridean Islands between Skye and Harris --Nicolson's book is an all-encompassing characterisation of this remote corner of the British Isles.

Nicolson begins by describing how, inheriting the islands from his father as a young man, the islands have come to have an unusually deep meaning for him. This comes out in his painstaking reconstruction of the geological formation of the islands, of their ancient bronze and iron age settlements, and of the harsh lives of the families that lived here until large-scale economies destroyed traditional Hebridean life.

There is much sadness and anger in Nicolson's account of these changes, but also joy--joy at the richness of life in such a place, and joy that these changes have allowed Nicolson himself to experience the Shiants' beauty. The precision with which almost every inch of the islands' physical and historical identities are described is, literally, marvellous; Nicolson eschews generalities, and writes with a love of detail that is increasingly rare. Although the book is a little maudlin at times, this is only the reflection of Nicolson's own sensitivity to the place. The Shiants are anthropomorphised, becoming a character in their own right, proof that the tiniest place can reflect the passage of time. --Toby Green

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Average rating - (more reviews)

Rating: - Island magic

Adam Nicholson - Eton, Cambridge - inherits the Shiants, a group of unhinhabited islands in the Hebrides. There's not much here now: thousands of birds, a tumbledown shack filled with rats and a few flocks of sheep. But not so long ago, a community of families eked out a grim existence here and called the Shiants home. Nicholson is clearly in love with the islands and this book is their story and the story of his relationship with them. It's very well researched and beautifully written. I'm staggered that some other reviewers disagree.

Should an English toff be allowed to own these islands? It's a subject explored towards the end of the book and - for this reader at least - the answer is a resounding yes. Far better they should "belong" to somebody who cares for them passionately than be passed onto the stewardship of some faceless organisation like the RSPB. Whatever you think about that, this book is likely to leave you desperate to visit the Shiants and see for yourself what makes them so special.

Rating: - Disappointing

What a disappointment. The book rambles dreadfully. As soon as you find an interesting bit the author then goes off at a tangent and you lose the thread. I should stress that there are some good bits and some of the turns of phrase are poetic but, in the main, I found the book dull. I was glad I got it out of the library rather than bought it. Doesn't the pic on the new paperback version look fab, though? Pity the text of the 2001 hardback only has small black and white pics in it.

Rating: - Intoxicating

Three years ago, I saw 'Sea Room' in a small shop in Ullapool just before I caught the ferry to the Western Isles. Never have I been so captivated by a book. I was so taken that when i arrived in Lewis I travelled to the Isle of Harris and caught a lift with a fisherman who dropped me off on the Islands for a day. I clambered about on the rocks and imagined the place through the eyes of the author, his father and the countless generations who lived there before him.

Maybe I might suffer form emothional bias when I praise this book therefore, having soaked up the enthusiasm of Adam Nicolson. But my passion for this book is still immeasurable today nonetheless and this is why - I am no geologist, but I became fascinated by the rocks on the Shiants even before I arrived, as I was the folklore of the islands, the history, the dark fierce winters and the stories linked to every beach. I love the fact that Adam Nicolson is soaked with sentimentality and nostalgia for the place, it's infectious and moving. Reading this book turns the Shiants into a living place, bustling with seabirds, sea breeze, seals and ancient settlements, a few rocks jutting out of the churning sea. Tieing this in with their sheer isolation makes it a perfect remedy for escapism, to an almost spiritual level. But far far better to go there, and this book will urge you to make the journey.

Rating: - Room with a view !

This is an intriguing book. Not a five star epic travelogue...it gets a bit too dry and academic in places...but lovers of the Scottish west coast with its unique socio/economic, cultural and natural history will find themselves well and truly sated by this near 400 page tome.
Adam Nicholson can count himself one of the luckiest people on the planet to have inherited the wild and savagely beautiful Shiant Islands.
Fortunately AN is hardly blase about his wonderful gift and has obviously burnt the midnight oil delving deep in every aspect of Shiant life.
What comes through is the sheer savage beauty of the islands. Wild in tooth and claw and the arena for some truly heartbreaking tales of love and loss.
The islands are not a place where dreams and fortunes are made. Rather they are a place of harsh reality and stuggle.
Death haunts the barren land and stormy seas surrounding the islands but in the midst of death,living breathing human beings have conspired to steal a living off the land and the sea.
Of course eventually,like gnats living on a Elephant, islanders are shaken off and the Shiants return to their lonely granduer.
It's a tribute to Adam Nicholson that he records the reality and doesn't water it down with roseate impressions.

Rating: - At Scotland's edge amidst wind and waterscapes

"She wanted to leave. She was unable to see the point in being out on a shelterless rock in a meaningless sea, under a muffled grey sky, where there are no loos and no baths, where there is not even a little copse or spinney in which one can sit down and read, where the house itself is little better than a shed, where the wind blows and blows and where your husband is for some reason obsessed with every fact and detail of this godforsaken nowhere."

Such is the enthusiasm for the Shiant Isles exhibited by the wife of Adam Nicolson, author of SEA ROOM. Adam is owner of these roughly six hundred acres distributed over three wave and wind ravaged islands in the Minch, that stretch of ocean lying between the Scottish island of Skye and the Outer Hebrides. Adam had inherited them from his father, who purchased them in 1937.

The author does indeed examine every fact and detail that can be known or surmised about this edge on civilization's margin: the art of getting there by small boat, the migratory bird life, its human history as revealed by archeology and public records, its geology, its successive native industries over the centuries (farming, fishing, kelping, sheepherding), and its weather. Occasionally, there's unintended humor, as when he describes the labors involved in transferring some cattle off the island by coastal steamer:

"The men waited below (the steamer) in the dinghy as the poor beast was lifted by its horns high into the air, bellowing at the indignity and with fear. Just as the animal was high above the gunwale, the men in the dinghy guiding it in by the tail, the bullock emptied the entire contents of its four stomachs over the men below. That was the last time any cattle were seen on the Shiants." Or, when he describes the equally valiant efforts of the rams (tups) sent to the islands to impregnate the resident ewes:

"The tups are put on in November, about eight or nine of them for the three hundred-odd ewes, and are taken off in February, knackered (exhausted)." Yes, well, that's the plight of us males everywhere regardless of species. It's a tough and thankless but necessary job.

Most of SEA ROOM is a sober narrative about ordinary life on, and the ecosystem of, the Shiants - ordinary with a capital "O". After all, through the centuries no more than perhaps thirty people have called the islands home at any one time. It was never the site of a great city, or the center of an empire, or the scene of heroic accomplishment beyond just making a life in a remote and inhospitable place. Indeed, the Shiants have lacked permanent human residents for the past hundred years. Thus, while Nicolson's magnificent prose makes the story reasonably interesting, it wasn't enough to earn more than four stars in my opinion ... that is, until the concluding chapter. It's because of these last pages, a heartfelt and poignant manifesto of the author's great and consuming love for this far-flung spot, a legacy for his son Tom, that I finally awarded five stars for the whole.

"I was left alone in the silence, with the pale sun on my face, and, as the dogs nosed for nothing in the grasses, I started to fall asleep there to the long, asthmatic rhythm of the surf. The islands embraced and enveloped me. Twenty yards to my left the Viking was asleep in his grave ..."

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