Named a New York Times Notable Book of 2022 and a TIME Must Read Book of 2022
"A master of exquisite, personable prose . . . Nicolson’s books are unified by a similar impossible hankering—exquisitely expressed—for a more cohesive past, for all the things that premodern forms of social life and culture got right . . . Life Between the Tides thus tells a story that is not just about tidepools but even more so about the ways, barely remembered today, in which one might strive to live a life in sync with the rhythms of the land and the sea . . . a book as shimmeringly beautiful as any of his pools.”—Christoph Irmscher, The Wall Street Journal
“[Life Between the Tides] evokes [the tide pools’] tiny inhabitants in lovely detail . . . Periwinkles smell the juices of their crab-killed comrades and flee into crevices. There’s brutality here, but also brilliance—anemones, despite literal brainlessness, adeptly size up their rivals—and astonishing tenderness . . . Nicolson’s at his best when he’s focused on his precious littoral world.” —Ben Goldfarb, The New York Times Book Review
"The thread that links Nicolson’s books is precisely this – a philosopher’s wish to provide a way of comprehending the place of the individual in a vast and shifting world, the quest for a good life, the search for new answers to old questions . . . Spending time in Nicolson’s rock pool will change your life and the way you view the lives of others." —Alex Preston, The Guardian
"[Nicolson] succeeds gloriously in conveying the marvels of a stretch of Scottish tidal coast, mixing history, science, and precise descriptions bright with inventive metaphors and profound revelations." —Booklist (Starred Review)
“Nicolson brings capacious erudition and acute sensitivity to his intimate investigation of the ebb, the flow, and the teeming variety of life in tidal pools. Like William Blake, who saw the world in a grain of sand, Nicolson sees the universe, and humans’ meaning within it, in that liminal, ever changing habitat . . . Illustrated with photographs and delicate drawings, [Life Between the Tides] is a marvel.” —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
“From the inner lives of prawns to the evil fairies of Morvern, Life Between the Tides is a thrillingly unclassifiable work of obsession and tenderness, introspection and deep observation. In rock pools dug with pickaxes and hammers, Adam Nicolson finds the entire universe reflected.” —Nathaniel Rich, author of Second Nature
"Evocative . . . [Nicolson’s] wonder is infectious, and he makes a convincing case that to better understand the sea, people must pay more attention . . . As poetic as it is enlightening, [Life Between the Tides] is tough to put down." —Publishers Weekly
"The rock pools, strands and beaches between us and the sea are vibrant interzones, endlessly renewed, full of life. They are fertile, fluid places, where humans, crustaceans, seabirds, cultures and dreams exist, constantly evolving before our eyes, changing sex and shape and meaning. In his miraculous new book, Adam Nicolson brings them all together, under his expert, writerly purview. Effortlessly, in deft, sure and delightful prose, he segues through species, science and art to present tidal nature as a microcosm. The result is an utterly fascinating glimpse of a watery world we only thought we knew." —Philip Hoare, author of Albert & the Whale
"Nicolson is the supreme poet of the edges—which is where the only interesting and significant things happen. And in Life Between the Tides—a book explicitly about the liminal places where everything is change—his talents are supremely on display. The shore confounds the whole notion of boundaries, and it takes a writer who himself despises and transgresses the traditional boundaries of 'science', 'philosophy', and 'art' to do justice to the shore. Nicolson brings all of himself to the foaming edge of the sea. No one else I know would have the nerve to do that. The result is a subversive, disconcerting triumph; a wondering, wonderful thing." —Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast and Being a Human
"If you like to gorge on words and ideas you could hardly hope for a finer feast than this. Nicolson serves up the nature and science of the seashore with a side order of human history and legend, seasoned beautifully with philosophical insight and a pinch of autobiography. For dessert, there's even a generous slice of the meaning of life. If it sounds a bit rich, don't worry. It's all so delicious you'll find room for it." —Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
"Adam Nicolson takes the margins between land and water, poetry and biology, and creates a beautiful, powerful story of how we understand the unfolding change of the shore. This is a remarkable and powerful book, the rarest of things, both a call-to-arms and a call-to-pause and truly look. Nicolson is unique as a writer, happy soaked to the skin on the shoreline and happy unweaving skeins of philosophy. I loved it." —Edmund de Waal, author of Letters to Camondo
10/25/2021
Ondaatje Prize winner Nicolson studies the life that teems inside tide pools in this evocative meditation (after The Seabird’s Cry). “Creatures” are the ocean’s “genes,” he writes, and sheds light on the life that lives along the coast, among them the common prawn, “minuscule adventurers, at home in this world, with pitch-perfect neutral buoyancy, floating in their stillness neither up nor down” and whose limbs serve “different functions—manducatory, for chewing, ambulatory, for walking, natatory, for swimming.” There’s a fascinating section on “the dramas of crab life,” as Nicolson baits the creatures with bacon and watches males “fight hard over access to females.” A chapter on vibrant, many-colored anemones references a young T.S. Eliot, whose family spent summers near Gloucester, Mass., where the poet saw “a sea anemone for the first time,” an event that influenced Eliot’s writing, Nicolson suggests. The author’s wonder is infectious, and he makes a convincing case that to better understand the sea, people must pay more attention: “Go to the rocks and the living will say hello.” As poetic as it is enlightening, this is tough to put down. Illus. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, the Zoë Pagnamenta Agency. (Feb.)
★ 02/04/2022
Award-winning author Nicolson (The Seabird's Cry: The Lives and Loves of the Planet's Great Ocean Voyagers) combines poetry and marine life in his meditative look at the seashore near his home in the Scottish Highlands. Observing plants, animals and microorganisms in concert with seasons, tides and one another, he feels the slipperiness of seaweed; tastes the salt air; and listens to the rain and screeching birds. Nicolson builds three rock pools in the bay to watch firsthand as sandhoppers leap and anemones attack. The culture, traditions, and industry of people, both modern and ancient, play a role in this story as do the rocks and tides. Nicolson ties the work of naturalists, poets, philosophers, and current scientists into his contemplation of time, presence, and refuge. VERDICT Nicolson's lyrical history and description of one ecosystem is active, thoughtful, and inviting and will appeal to both the scientific and literary minded.—Catherine Lantz
English actor Leighton Pugh’s engaging midrange voice, which is both crisp and warm, is the perfect accompaniment to Adam Nicolson’s consideration of life in those intertidal rock pools particularly beloved by children—and grown-ups like Nicolson, an award-winning author, naturalist, and historian. Audibly curious and awed, Pugh’s attentive pacing and sheer friendliness channel Nicolson’s delight in the tidal universes where “disturbed creatures jump away as chaotically as bubbles in champagne” and the hormones of dominant female sand hoppers inhibit the development of their rivals’ ovaries. Yeah, whoa. Full of such astonishing information, this tender ode to nature also offers lessons on existence learned from the existences studied by Nicolson, including, “Life is tidal, full of loss and arrival, a thing that makes and ebbs.” A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2022 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
English actor Leighton Pugh’s engaging midrange voice, which is both crisp and warm, is the perfect accompaniment to Adam Nicolson’s consideration of life in those intertidal rock pools particularly beloved by children—and grown-ups like Nicolson, an award-winning author, naturalist, and historian. Audibly curious and awed, Pugh’s attentive pacing and sheer friendliness channel Nicolson’s delight in the tidal universes where “disturbed creatures jump away as chaotically as bubbles in champagne” and the hormones of dominant female sand hoppers inhibit the development of their rivals’ ovaries. Yeah, whoa. Full of such astonishing information, this tender ode to nature also offers lessons on existence learned from the existences studied by Nicolson, including, “Life is tidal, full of loss and arrival, a thing that makes and ebbs.” A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2022 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
★ 2021-11-30
A journey into the wonderment of a tidal inlet.
Memoirist, historian, and nature writer Nicolson brings capacious erudition and acute sensitivity to his intimate investigation of the ebb, the flow, and the teeming variety of life in tidal pools. Like William Blake, who saw the world in a grain of sand, Nicolson sees the universe, and humans’ meaning within it, in that liminal, ever changing habitat. The shore, he writes, quoting poet Seamus Heaney, “is where ‘things overflow the brim of the usual,’ and that brim is at the heart of this book.” Along the coast of Scotland, Nicolson created his own tidal pool by digging through Jurassic rock that had been buried for 200 million years. “If tides are our twice-daily connection to the universe,” he writes, “the rocks are our ever-present library of time.” Soon the pool became home to sandhoppers, prawns, winkles, crabs, anemone, and more—each with its particular biology and behavior, affording the author “repeated chances of ecstatic encounter.” Nicolson augments his own lucid observations with those of naturalists, biologists, and zoologists from ancient times to the present, and he enlarges his purview to include Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus, Herbert Spencer, and Heidegger, among others, for insight into how “the human, the planetary and the animal all interact” in watery topography. Like Virginia Woolf, Nicolson is “entranced by liquidity, which could embody realities that solids could scarcely address.” The shore, he writes, “is filled with infinite regressions,” from the swelling ocean “into the microscopic.” Water inspires deeply philosophical reflection. Above all, the author seeks to illuminate his own place in space and time. “The coexistence with the things of the pool, the being-with them, a total co-presence with them, came to seem like a way of establishing my own being in the world,” he writes. To be-with is the only way to be.”
Illustrated with photographs and delicate drawings, this book is a marvel.
