The Draw of the Sea

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It's beautiful and thoughtfully human, a portrait of those lives that revolve around the swell of ocean and tide. It also brought me right out of another book rut, and therefore as usual, improved my entire mental climate. My own love of the sea, and the Cornish coast in particular, is deepened by seeing it through the eyes of so many others. I absolutely loved the authors style of writing not only do you feel like your learning so much in a fun way but I felt like I was experiencing them aswell. This book is a meaningful and moving work into how we interact with the environment around us, and how it comes to shape the course of our lives.

Across 13 chapters, this mix of memoir, travelogue and nature writing engages with the people and communities of coastal Cornwall and Menmuir’s adventures as he explores the draw of the sea.When you can’t be in your favourite place all the time, catch up on the latest stories, upcoming events, holiday ideas, and offers with a newsletter straight to your inbox. Whenever I would listen to a chapter I would be transported into the moment Wyl Menmiur, or the people he met, lived through when they were drawn to the sea. The Draw of the Sea is immersive and inviting and filled with people who for all sorts of reasons go to the sea, and reading it will make you want to go with them. In fact the book itself is a gorgeous item, the cover a treat to the eye, the endpapers marbled, the photos atmospheric and numinous. And for a few moments the grief wasn’t silenced so much as confronted by a wall of deafening white noise muting its constant scream.

Through the experiences of those people who fully embrace the romance and adventure that seaside living provides, Wyl Menmuir explores our profound connection to the most powerful of natural forces. Menmuir has picked an interesting bunch of people that have a story to tell about their life on the coast. Here we dip into the lives of beachcombers, surfers, free-divers, shell-seekers, artists, wildlife-watchers and more, whose obsessions bring them into a daily embrace with depths that can be beautiful and dangerous in equal measure. As Darke’s widow says to him, these objects “make the whole world seem a whole lot smaller, a lot more connected”. Set in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, the book is split into 13 different chapters, or short stories told by the author about a different aspect of the sea and coastal life.I saw it in the shine in people’s eyes as they talked about their relationships with the sea, in the way so many of them campaign tirelessly for its protection, and in the impassioned pleas from marine biologists that we must act now to save it. It was a tragedy that sent novelist Wyl Menmuir to the “demi-island” of Cornwall, with its long and sinuous shoreline. Across twelve beautifully written interlinked chapters, Menmuir explores the many aspects of our relationship with the sea. It's endearing and intimate and a must for anyone that feels the pull or connection when by the sea. It isn't just about living near the water or working on the water, it is how life, of the person, the sea, and the community, all come together into a whole.

He even has a go at free diving, those amazing people who can hold their breath for minutes at a time. In his 1972 Shell Book of Beachcombing, Tony Soper insists that beachcombers must ‘adapt to the change and learn to enjoy the plastic artefacts which decorate the tideline’.

It's grim reading in places, but we do also meet people who are trying to make a difference - and the author admits that there can be a sort of syncronicitous beauty in the bizarre findings from beaches, even in all that plastic.