The west coast of Ireland has captured the island’s imagination at least since the revival generation of poets, playwrights and painters pictured its shores as the origin of national authenticity. That other island eastward has tended to drift away in the century since, Brexit a low farce to follow the high drama of the Abbey stage.
Today, the sea crossing between Ireland and Britain is a space to pass through, the worn fabric of the lounge seats a reminder of the old Cork train, with none of the travellers’ happy chatter, and no invitation to the dining car. Only on deck is there a reminder of a different time, when the rough waters made travel a challenge, and the sea an intimate, unavoidable reality. The Turning Tide invites a return to this perspective, the book a beachcomber’s guide to the debris of history washed up on the coasts of Wales and Ireland. Scotland and England are here too, but less so, with Rathlin and the Isle of Man adrift.
Jon Gower has a good ear for a story, and an easy style to tell it, and The Turning Tide is an enjoyable trawl through the miscellaneous histories of the communities that have passed through the Irish Sea from deep time until now. His method is enjoyably idiosyncratic, picking up this thing and that on the foreshore, the narrative flowing back and forth across time and place. The effect can be a little overwhelming, one chapter ending with the Normans storming Wexford, the next beginning on the Dublin docks seven centuries later, the sheer volume of life by the water flooding the subject.
The book is best on the ebb, and Gower is a thoughtful, companionable guide to the mudflats and the bays, the marine life and the birds that still travel the old routes humans have largely forsaken. His account of the Brent Geese of Dublin is a classic of observation of a kind with Tim Dee, as are his memories of the shearwaters of Skokholm Island.
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Sitting by the pier in Roundstone, Tim Robinson had the idea that for all Pangea had shattered, Panthalassa remain intact. The Turning Tide is similarly a book of connection, a welcome and a wandering reminder of the sea beyond our door.
Nicholas Allen is the Baldwin Professor in the Humanities at the University of Georgia
