All at Sea in October and November

I read three books with ‘sea’ in the title after linking from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue with the exciting link word: ‘the’:

• The Lonely Sea and the Sky – Francis Chichester (Autobiography)
• Sea of Tranquility – Emily St. John Mandel (Time Travel)
• Our Wives under the Sea – Julia Armfield (Horror Romance)

My To Read List is looking pretty sad after I foolishly went to a booksale unsupervised and grew my pile! I am still quietly hopeful the list might have fewer books on it than I started with but I am currently at only -3 despite reading 22 books off the list!

A summary of what I thought of these three books follows:

I loved The Lonely Sea and the Sky (5 stars), an autobiography which although it was published in the mid nineteen sixties which is now more than sixty(!) years ago I still found a gripping and exciting read. The author, Francis Chichester, was a pioneer aviator and later helped to invent long-distance yacht racing as a sport. The early parts of the book, especially the flights to Australia and Japan are compelling stuff. Just imagine trying to find Baghdad airport in the 1930s and randomly landing your tiny plane there, wondering what you’re going to find. Well worth a read if you can find it.

Sea of Tranquility (3 stars) is definitely within the time travel genre, but it also has a strong pandemic theme, in common with Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. The Sea of Tranquility of the title is a geographic feature on the moon, and in fact a good portion of the book is set in a future where colonists live on the Moon. I enjoy the way St. John Mandel features the same characters in multiple books, setting up a ‘metalepsis’ or world of fiction in her novels. There’s a nice idea of exploring a time travel anomaly in this book, and it potentially sets up for more sequels (but if you’re new to St. John Mandel, start by reading Station Eleven which I thought was spectacular).

I didn’t know what to expect of Our Wives Under the Sea (3 stars) – but what I got was a horror romance novel. We have two protagonists, and the story is told partially in the present and partially in the past. Miri’s wife Leah has come back somehow ‘wrong’ from a deep sea expedition – how wrong is she, and what happened down there, as well as a recap of Miri and Leah’s romance is the subject of the novel. It’s suitably weird that you should give it a go as I haven’t read much like it.

I am getting towards the end of the year and I am going to have read significantly less than in previous years. I think this is simply because I’ve read at least three very long books (think over 250,000 words – the average novel is just 80,000). But my book chaining has been a fun challenge. I have had to buy a book to keep the chain going after my next book though – more on that next time.