Frances Thimann praises Kathryn Tann’s Seaglass, part memoir and part ode to water, for its originality and beauty.
This is a delightful and unusual book, beautifully written, a collection of essays and reflections on the author’s own life, its different phases and interests from childhood to adulthood. But Seaglass: Essays, Moments and Reflections is focused above all on place and landscape, and her own relationship to these things.
Main image: Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland | Credit: Ray Bilcliff
“Places are not separate from people – not on an island like ours. Places are a collection of stories, they hold each chapter in their hedgerows, their forest floors… not hard to find when you take a moment, a proper look,” she writes.
She points out that the landscapes she loves are not static, but have always changed, even from the earliest times. But she is angry at the harm we as humans have done and still do to our landscapes, sometimes irrecoverably. But water, in all its forms, sea, lake and river, and her love of swimming, especially wild swimming, is her particular passion, and there are many lovely descriptions of water throughout.
In the first essay, ‘On Collecting Seaglass’, she describes the joy of finding and collecting these beautiful coloured shapes, rounded and wave-worn on the shore, ‘little fragments of light’: fragments from bygone people and lives, each one holding so much of the past.
Rhossili Bay in South Wales. Credit: Mark Tucker/Pexels
The following chapters describe a number of different scenes and landscapes – especially the South Wales coastline, where she grew up; the Thousand Islands in the St Lawrence River, and other places in Canada, home to her partner; and the North-East of England, where she now lives and works.
There are also short and poignant descriptions of individual places and moments of particular importance to her. These sections are combined with passages of autobiography and memoir from her childhood onwards, on family and relationships; on food; and there is a delightful chapter describing how she found an ancient family dictionary, tiny and fragile, with its old-fashioned definitions and phrases – its words still important to her work now as a writer.
And above all, it is the beauty and originality of her writing, especially about water, that is so memorable. Describing her swim in one remote mountain pool, she writes: “If I was asked to define the word ‘bliss’ I think this secret pool – the way it holds my body in its clarity – would be my answer.”
Seaglass is published by Calon (hardback, £16.99)
When contributors to The Great Outdoors aren’t out walking, some like to relax with a good book. Read their outdoor book reviews and discover your next adventurous bedtime story.
