The Place of Tides - by James Rebanks (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"The Place of Tides feels like, not only a modern classic, but one we very much need right now." -George Saunders

From perhaps the preeminent nature writer of our time and the acclaimed author of Pastoral Song and The Shepherd's Life, a magical work of nonfiction in which James Rebanks reflects on a life-changing summer spent on a remote island off the coast of Norway, where his only companion was an old woman who practiced the ancient tradition of collecting eiderdown from birds that nest on this remarkable landscape each year.

We are all in need of lights to follow.

One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on.

Back at home, Rebanks couldn't stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly--and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come quickly: her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island.

This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for gathering, like feathered gold.

Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not what he had previously thought. What began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge and forgiveness.

Review Quotes

"In these 285 thoughtful, beautifully written pages, James Rebanks shows, better than anything I've read recently, the precise quality of the catastrophe befalling the natural world and also what we might begin to do about it. Humane, beautifully paced, gentle, and strangely compelling, The Place of Tides feels like, not only a modern classic, but one we very much need right now." -- George Saunders

"A quietly profound book. It is a story about a still-essential way of living in the modern world and finding a way to keep going. It is also a deft travelogue to one of the world's wildest seascapes. . . . [Rebanks's] assured narrative paints a picture of a wondrous world. It is one that few of us will ever visit but are all the better for knowing about." -- The Sunday Times

"The Place of Tides is a magical book, at once a lament for a world in danger of disappearing, and a celebration of an indomitable spirit determined to preserve it. James Rebanks has written a quiet yet ringing masterpiece." -- John Banville

"A beautiful book about the lives we think we're going to lead versus the lives we actually live."
-- Paula Hawkins

"A magnificent book - wonderfully unlike any other . . . The Place of Tides is big-hearted and transporting, a quietly gripping reckoning with self-sufficiency and interdependence, with the lives that make us and the lives that we make." -- Philip Gourevitch

"James Rebanks has done a miraculous thing. He takes the reader with him to a stark, remote island on the strangest mission in the toughest circumstances and makes you feel like you're coming home. A profound, transformative, uplifting story." -- Isabella Tree

"Lyrical and enchanting . . . Rebanks is an extraordinary writer, and The Place of Tides will linger in the mind for a long time." -- The Telegraph

"[An] enchanting book . . . [Rebanks] writes of his season with the duck women with elegance, acuity and a rare tenderness." -- The Times Literary Supplement

"An elegiac tale . . . It is a book of stillness, quiet, vigilance, and the kind of patience that is measured not in hours but in lifetimes." -- FT

"I love this book. It has deepened my world considerably, feathered my spiritual nest." -- Rachel Kushner

"The Place of Tides is all that I want from a story: poetic, true, and full of feeling." -- Marcus Mumford, lead singer of Mumford & Sons

"In honed prose akin to that of Hemingway, Rebanks weaves a quietly captivating fable about what it means to be true to your roots and your longing to save a dying world." -- Sydney Morning Herald

"A fable-like tale, as beautiful and elusive as the idea of home and self it seeks to recover." -- Richard Flanagan, Booker Prize-winning author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North

"A transfixing, tender, and open-hearted account of a spring spent with two remarkable people ... Rebanks captures nature's exquisiteness [and] quietly captivates the human heart. . . . It is a beautiful journey." -- Irish Times

"A profound reflection on the natural world." -- Evening Standard (London)

"An extraordinary story, gently told. This was just the book I needed." -- Nigel Slater, author of A Thousand Feasts

"A spellbinding story of wildness, healing, and nature. A message we all need to hear, told with immense honesty and vulnerability. Magical!" -- Julius Roberts, author of The Farm Table

"A charismatic portrait of fidelity and the true meaning of home." -- Nick Offerman

"Surprisingly gripping . . . Rebanks excels at describing the raw beauty of the island." -- Daily Mail (UK)

"Unfolding like a Nordic Decameron, this is a book for a wide readership, with spare prose . . . It is a book of bitten beauty, full of keen observations, and, for all its reverence, it is one of reckoning. On the cusp of the Arctic, during a magical harvest, a single-minded farmer is forced to face his own demons." -- Country Life

"Rebanks's telling of the skilled work and cultural history that he learns from Anna Måsøy is all this otherwise enlightening book needs.'" -- Observer

"Rebanks is an extraordinary writer, and The Place of Tides will linger in the mind for a long time." -- Sunday Telegraph

"Deceptively simple, emotionally surprising, beautiful, and true." -- Melissa Harrison

"A love letter to the quiet and complex majesty of a little-known landscape and the women that tirelessly tend to it. It moved, humbled and educated me and made a place I have never set my eyes on suddenly vivid and close." -- Vanessa Kisuule

"The Place of Tides is terrific - so honest and strange. It's somehow about eider ducks, middle age, one woman's breathtaking skill and determination, the collapse of the natural order and everything in between. I think it's Rebanks's best book yet." -- Sam Knight

"In this soulful account, Rebanks reflects on working alongside one of the last traditional 'duck women, ' who care for eider ducks during nesting season, on Norway's Vega Archipelago. . . . A wistful depiction of a vanishing way of life, this will move readers." -- Publishers Weekly