Christmas is for catching up on all the books we’ve missed, right? These are our recommendations. What will you be reading? Get in touch and let us know: elsewhere@outdoorswimmingsociety.com
I loved this strange, stylish, suspenseful novella, which follows Kathleen Beckett as she decides to go for a swim. That might not sound like the most extravagant start, but this is 1950s Delaware, where Virgil and Kathleen Beckett live in Acropolis Place, an apartment complex with ‘a small, kidney-shaped swimming pool’ where nobody ever swims.
The water is ‘as blue as a dream,’ Kathleen thinks, before climbing down the metal stepladder into the pool. Despite all the older residents who watch from behind their curtains, and Virgil’s increasing anxiety about what they might think, Kathleen spends the whole day like this, swimming laps and resting at the edge, while dreaming about who she used to be, who she wants to be, and the possibility of being honest with her husband.
Is swimming an act of ennui or defiance? Has Kathleen given up or is she ready to change? The answers change with every twist and turn in this complicated marriage.
The Most by Jessica Anthony (Doubleday, 2024)
In 2009, at the age of 15, Ajulu-Bushell became the world number one in 50m breaststroke. In 2010, she became the first Black woman to represent Great Britain at the European Championships, before winning the 50m and 100m breaststroke at the British Championships. But in 2012, just months before the London Olympics, Ajulu-Bushell decided there was life beyond the pool.
These Heavy Black Bones evokes in vivid detail a complicated childhood, split between the UK and Kenya, an early affinity for the pool, and troubled teenage years battling loneliness at a British boarding school, where Ajulu-Bushell would be pushed to breaking point in pursuit of ‘the perfect race’.
This artistic, fast-paced, fascinating memoir is a search for meaning in all the early mornings, the countless lengths and years of loneliness, which will leave you in awe of young athletes and angry at the impossible demands of competitive sport. ‘You can’t make a good swim out of fear or sadness,’ Ajulu-Bushell writes. ‘You can be nervous, but it has to come from euphoria, belief and a lack of self-consciousness.’
The Heavy Black Bones by Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell (Canongate, 2024)
This is one for fans of Mudlarking and The Salt Path – a travelogue around the changing coastline of Britain and Ireland, which draws together all kinds of knowledge and research, from ancient manuscripts and folklore to geology and even space exploration.
Starting on the Isle of Sheppey where Woollett spent her childhood, searching for fossils and fascinated by stories of change, Lost To The Sea embarks on a journey in 10 parts, from the Isle of Wight to the Moray Coast. We travel through time, to the palaeolithic era before Britain was an island, when you could walk from Norfolk to the Netherlands. We travel through space, discovering strange similarities between the Sands of Forvie in Scotland and dust storms on the surface of Mars. But as this journey continues, we start to realise this is also a story about our own time, the impacts of climate change over millennia and the likelihood of this loss actually accelerating over the next 100 years.
Lost to the Sea by Lisa Woollett (John Murray Press, 2024)
From the history of our oceans to the future …
In What The Wild Sea Can Be, marine biologist, Helen Scales, faces up to the impacts of human activity on marine life and explores our unique opportunity as a species to increase biodiversity and improve ocean health.
There’s a lifetime of knowledge and research here, but Scales writes with a light touch and a warm, engaging voice. We travel around the world’s oceans, meeting lionfish in the Bahamas, bluefin tuna in the Atlantic and Emperor penguins in Antarctica. We learn about the dizzying range of threats, such as bottom trawling, deep-sea mining and so-called ‘forever chemicals’.
Scales also goes in search of the solutions, from good old diplomatic efforts, sustainable fisheries and nature reserves to some of the more futuristic possibilities, such as floating cities, lab-grown seafood and bio banking endangered species.
What The Wild Sea Can Be by Helen Scales (Grove Press, 2024)
The Ocean Speaks is perfect for any young people who are curious about marine life. This beautiful encyclopaedia opens with astronaut, Nicola Stott, reflecting on our blue planet from outer space, before embarking on a tour of the world’s oceans, meeting sperm whales in the Azores, manatees in Florida, giant cuttlefish and leatherback turtles, elusive reef manta rays on the Ningaloo Coast, strange sea dragons, dugongs off the coast of East Africa, camouflage groupers in French Polynesia, devil rays in the Sea of Cortez, orangutan crabs, sea butterflies in the Sargasso Sea, transparent octopuses, walruses in the icy waters of Svaldbard, jellyfish in Alaska – and so much more!
The Ocean Speaks curated by Matt Porteous & Tamsin Raine (Quarto, 2024)
This year marks 200 years since Sir William Henry first proposed the formation of a National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck.
Henry lived on the Isle of Man, where he witnessed many shipwrecks and even helped to save endangered lives on the Vigilant and Racehorse. By the time he came to consider the situation, Doe writes, ‘there were 39 lifeboats owned by different groups and individuals around the coast, enjoying varying degrees of effectiveness.’
Henry envisioned a group of volunteers living ‘in constant readiness to risk their own lives for the preservation of those whom they have never known or seen, perhaps of another nation, merely because they are fellow creatures in extreme peril’. Doe’s impressive account shines a light on some of these heroic volunteers who, over the past 200 years, have saved 150,000 lives.
One Crew by Helen Doe (Amberley Publishing, 2024)