“Beautiful account of seal lore”
'The People of the Sea' is a documentation of what I can only assume is now a lost land: the outer edges of Scotland and Ireland; the outer edges of civilisation. ‘Documentation’, though, is far too dry a word. Instead, this book overflows with poetry, with story, with humanity – because the stories are not only of the seals, their myths and legends as told by the people Thomson meets on his journeys, but of the tellers themselves; their lives, their livelihoods, their beliefs.
The seals themselves are held by the storytellers in both reverence and fear, as protector and as warning. Their uncanny similarity to humans – from their vocal grunts to gestures and behaviours – are perhaps the origin of many of the stories, but this is not what interests Thomson. It is only the stories and the telling of them that captures him – there is no analysis, no reconstruction of ideas, no personal opinion on his behalf – and in this way the book and its contents remain pure, unaffected. “I don’t think of the stories that way,” Thomson says. “As lies or truth. I like to hear them; that’s all.”
Throughout my reading, I had to keep reminding myself that it was first written over 50 years ago. The writing is so present, somehow; so timeless. Do people still live like this? I wondered. How interesting it would be to go back to these places today – do the stories still exist? Or does 'The People of the Sea' represent the final telling of a now abandoned culture, flooded by modern ideals.
Ultimately, this book defies categorisation – nature writing, travel writing, historical account, myths and legends, it is a piece of each, and well worth a read.
Paperback edition
This reviewer received a free of charge product for review.
