Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2014
384 pages
Genre: Science, Health and the Environment
Publication Information
In colorful prose and lively line drawings, Hoare sets out to rediscover the sea and its islands, birds, and beasts. Starting at his home on the shores of Britain's Southampton Water and moving in ever widening circles - like the migration patterns of whales - Hoare explores London, the Isle of Wight, the Azores, Sri Lanka, Tasmania, and New Zealand.
As Hoare brilliantly weaves together literary and natural history, we encounter memorable people as well as the dolphins, whales, and other creatures above and below the water (even one species formerly believed to be extinct).
Echoing the fine tradition of W. G. Sebald, but in a voice all Hoare's own, The Sea Inside is bursting with an endless series of delights and revelations from the ever-changing sea.
"Starred Review. Hoare's writing awakens the senses with visions, sounds, and smells of the ocean; his delight and interest in nature will encourage readers to look around with new eyes." - Publishers Weekly
"A beautifully written memoir/travelogue with readable diversions into philosophy." - Kirkus
"A magnificent book." - Financial Times
"A crammed treasure chest." - The London Review of Books
This information about The Sea Inside was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Philip Hoare lives and works in Southampton, England. He is the author of The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea, winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction, as well as biographies of Noel Coward, Stephen Tennant, and a study of Oscar Wilde. He is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Southampton; artist in residence at the Marine Institute, Plymouth University; and cocurator of the Moby-Dick Big Read. Follow him on Twitter at @philipwhale.
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