Swimming with Seals
£7.50£8.50 (-12%)
A book about intense physical and personal experience, narrating how Victoria Whitworth began swimming in the cold waters of Orkney as a means of escaping a failing marriage.
This is a memoir of intense physical and personal experience, exploring how swimming with seals, gulls and orcas in the cold waters off Orkney provided Victoria Whitworth with an escape from a series of life crises and helped her to deal with intolerable loss.
It is also a treasure chest of history and myth, local folklore and archaeological clues, giving us tantalising glimpses of Pictish and Viking men and women, those people lost to history, whose long-hidden secrets are sometimes yielded up by the land and sea.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Apollo, Reissue edition (13 May 2021) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 304 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1838937447 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1838937447 |
| Dimensions | 12.9 x 2.03 x 19.81 cm |
by S. Hunt
Swimming With Seals is a wonderful book with so many layers. It’s quite hard to describe this book as it is a cornucopia of marvels big and small. This book is partly about life and how to feel alive even at your lowest ebb. It’s about Orkney and the history of the island and its people. It’s about wildlife and landscape old and new. Victoria mixes modern Orkney life with myths, legends and historical facts. This book encapsulates so much it is hard to put a label on it in terms of what type of book it is. The journey is muddled and flicks back and forth as if unstructured yet there is an order to the book. I didn’t personally want the book to end. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking in equal measure.
by Mr John W Garth
Broadly about how the author undertook a personal ritual of swimming all year round off the Orkney Isles, this extraordinary book explores a whole archipelago of meditations on islands, seas, sea-life, medieval literature, language, consciousness, childhood, marriage, selfhood…
The writing and the range of expertise are both astonishing. I can’t imagine how the author knitted it all together so that it flows in that oceanic way it does. The other night my jaw was dropped by an account of killer whale sonar – they can distinguish two almost identical salmon species by the differing shapes of their swim bladders.
I knew the author in our days studying English and putting the world to rights at university, but obviously I didn’t know her very well. I really had no idea what talent she was nurturing.
Highly recommended.
by Mel T
I freely admit that I decided to read this book out of a sense of nosiness and curiosity. I live in Orkney and I wanted to see what kind of Orkney this book would portray – would it put my defenses up so I felt I had to protect the Orkney she portrayed and I love so much?
Well I absolutely adored this book, I may have come to it for all the wrong reasons but I left it feeling different about myself.
It is so well written, I loved the strange and eclectic mix of topics, it conjured up some beautiful pictures in my minds eye. In fact when reading it at the end of the day it was descriptions from this book that came into my head as I was drifting off to sleep, I was in the dark, deep water with her, floating with the seals, the sky and the cold!
This book took me by surprise, I was enthralled, couldn’t wait to dip back into its pages. It is brave of the author to open up about her deepest feelings and what she feels are her shortcomings – but this also makes the book as powerful as it is to read..
This is a book I will return to again and again.
by Scotchick
Rather privileged incomer to Orkney goes swimming in the sea and sees some wildlife.
These tales are interspersed with an odd mish mash of quotes from Freud, various obscure literary references and the occasional anecdote about her life, none of the life references went into any depth so were unsatisfying.
A rather unsatisfying read.
by LH
There are some interesting stories but on the whole they are the ones that are mentioned in passing and not elaborated on. I only read it because it was a Book Club choice as I can’t think of anything worse than sea swimming anywhere in Scotland even in the summer, let alone all year around. seems like a dangerous and selfish thing for a mother to do.
by Tony K
Victoria Whitworth has produced an outstanding book, rich in detail. It works on many levels, particularly as an insightful perspective into Orkney’s unique history and culture, as well as a highly personal account of the author’s struggles with the death of her mother, her marriage and spiritual issues. The descriptions of the actual swimming in wild places is also fascinating.
by Elaine Baker
Again, nothing to dislike. I have yet to read this book as I have a number to get through before embarking on it.
by cathjof
A jewel of a book; lyrical, reflective, affirmative. The author swims in the cold water of Orkney, watched by and watching seals and other marine fauna. This is the warp to the weft of her often difficult childhood, failing marriage, her work, and the life of Orkney going on around her. Archaeology, history, linguistics, biology, are all woven in to make a beautiful shimmering cloth. Generally I like books to ‘get on with the story’, but I love the lyrical prose, returning to the book when I should be doing something else to grab a few greedy paragraphs.