“Set sail on limpid prose in this wonderful peregrination up the west coast of Britain and Ireland. There is no better guide to the deep and dazzling meanings found on the western fringe of Europe than Philip Marsden.”
In an old wooden sloop, Philip Marsden plots a course north from his home in Cornwall. He is sailing for the Summer Isles, a small archipelago near the top of Scotland that holds for him a deep and personal significance. On the way, he must navigate the west coast of Ireland and the Inner Hebrides. Bearing the full force of the Atlantic, it is a seaboard which is also a mythical frontier, a place as rich in story as anywhere on earth. Through the people he meets and the tales he uncovers, Marsden builds up a haunting picture of these shores - of imaginary islands and the Celtic otherworld, of the ageless draw of the west, of the life of the sea and perennial loss - and the redemptive power of the imagination. Exhilarating and poignant, Marsden's prose has been widely praised. Bringing together themes he has been pursuing for many years, The Summer Isles is an unforgettable account of the search for actual places, invented places, and those places in between that shape the lives of individuals and entire nations.
“Marsden brings characteristic elegance and insatiable curiosity to bear on his voyage; we are whisked along as passengers, alternately enchanted by this unforgettable coastline and apprehensive of its treachery. Even the most dogged landlubber cannot fail to be exhilarated by these stiff salt breezes.”
“I greatly enjoyed this book… the story of a solo voyage in a 31ft- wooden sailing boat along the west coast of Ireland, then the west coast of Scotland….a scintillating watery world….brilliantly evokes the isolation of those places… the book reads like a thriller.”
“He writes beautifully, and transforms what could easily have been a conventional travel book into something far more evocative and personal: “a sea journey is a passage of the soul”.... But what is so memorable and indeed magical is the way he interweaves the imaginary and the real.”
“Read this beautifully written and deeply moving book… A voyage of marvels.”
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‘Most things were lovely to Pat, particularly when it came to places on the island. He’d never wanted to be anywhere else, and his love for Clare had bred an unrivalled knowledge of its names and stories, its dinnseanchas. When a ‘fellow came map-making’, it was Pat who talked him through every inch of the north coast.’
