CURRENT AFFAIRS

A fascination with the ocean is explored in Risingtidefallingstar by Philip Hoare

Philip Hoare is obsessed by the sea, and the saints, sinners, sailors, artists and wanderers who are drawn to it. He listens to whale songs, heads to Cape Cod to commune with cormorants – “clamped to the rocks by their claws, heads bent to preen or raised to the sky” – and dawdles in the still green sea in Ireland’s Bantry Bay, contemplating famine ships headed for America across the wide ocean. He considers Nelson’s clothes, Melville’s manuscripts and is oddly comforted by the sound of a storm heading across the wild water, which turns an old house into a “woodwind instrument” as he lies in bed, “feeling more alive… knowing that out there is the sea, and all land is lost to the horizon”. ( Fourth Estate)