The Last House Before the Sea - by Gabi Martínez (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A year spent at the precipice of severe climate change in oceanfront Spain.

The Last House Before the Sea is the magnificent result of a year lived on the island of Buda, contemplating the passing of the seasons, the marshes, the seabirds, and a relentless horizon. In its pages, Gabi Martínez stitches scenes of the natural world alongside the day-to-day lives of this unique island's residents, many of whom have called it home for generations. But something disrupts the slow rhythms of eel fishing, rice farming, and the Ebro River's flow to the coast. Something is shifting.

As climate change tilts the scales of a fragile coexistence, and rising sea levels threaten to swallow their homes, the island's locals must reconcile their past and future--both beholden to a region that grows more endangered with each passing day.

Review Quotes

"Each industry, interest, and individual that Martínez encounters is presented with tender respect, quiet amusement, and a deep appreciation for natural wonder, the cycles of history, and the human predicament of those who know and love the delta best. . . . The mission of preservation is, like the land itself, murky and muddied, a product of progress and growth both triumphant and misguided; urgency swells and subsides like waters amid daily livelihoods. Martínez's account, in content, structure, and style, mirrors this nuance and complexity, resisting myopic quick fixes and even easy catastrophizing. A steady, tempering, enigmatic chronicle of a polarizing, and ultimately personal, ending."

-- Kirkus Reviews

"The Last House Before the Sea is a revelation . . . a prophetic meditation on the aching precarity of our impossibly beautiful world. Martínez transforms the island of Buda into a microcosm of our world and our future if we do not find in ourselves the love to act. A profound book by one of our finest writers."

-- Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and This is How You Lose Her

"Deltas are conversations between forces so much larger than the self: between land and sea, between saltwater and fresh, and, in today's climate changed world, between the past and the future. Gabi Martínez pays watchful attention to all who occupy one such landscape in northeastern Spain, asking how do we hold on to what has defined us even as it disappears beneath our very feet? The result is a thoughtful mix of elegy, prayer, and poetry, and in this day and age, we need all three."

-- Elizabeth Rush, author of The Quickening: Antarctica, Motherhood, and Cultivating Hope in a Warming World

"Gabi Martínez has invented a new literary genre: one that speaks of nature from within."

-- Kirmen Uribe, author of Bilbao-New York-Bilbao

"From the Nile to the Ganges to the Mississippi, deltas not only form a vertebral column throughout human history, but are also essential sources of biodiversity in the planet's balance. The Last House Before the Sea addresses this fascinating and often overlooked topic with exceptional originality, certain of the urgency of its testimony. Like Claudio Magris with the Danube, Gabi Martínez offers his life experience, erudition, and sensitivity on a journey to the heart of the Iberian Mediterranean, which unveils before our eyes the overwhelming evidence of the climate crisis as a collapse of the natural spaces that sustain life on Earth."

-- Michel Nieva, author of Dengue Boy

"A book to reconnect with nature, with naturalist literature, with the vibrant story of a present that yearns for a different, better future. Time passes, the year 2023 slips away, but another will come. In [The Last House Before the Sea], however, as if it were an ecological thriller, time is the killer, and everything points to it getting away with murder."

-- Ginés J. Vera, La Gonzo Magazine

"Gabi Martínez has written his best nonfiction work to date, no doubt about it, but it's as action-packed as a novel. Monologues and voices as vivid as those in theater, and all the beauty of lyric poetry that moves anyone who delves into the pages of his book."

-- Chus García, Revista Mercurio

"A monumental book, outstanding, unusual, magnetic, rich, thoughtful, intense and fascinating."

-- Jordi Cervera, Diari de Tarragona