No Signposts in the Sea

by Vita Sackville-West

Edmund Carr is at sea in more ways than one. An eminent journalist and self-made man, he has recently discovered that he has only a short time to live. Leaving his job on a Fleet Street paper, he takes a passage on a cruise ship where he knows that Laura, a beautiful and intelligent widow whom he secretly admires, will be a fellow passenger. Exhilarated by the distant vista of exotic islands never to be visited and his conversations with Laura, Edmund finds himself rethinking all his values.

A voyage on many levels, those long purposeless days at sea find Edmund relinquishing the past as he discovers the joys and the pain of a love he is simultaneously determined to conceal.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, British Literature, Literature, Romance, Collections, Novels

156 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Novels of British writer Victoria Mary Sackville-West, known as Vita, include The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931).

This prolific English author, poet, and memoirist in the early 20th century lived not so privately.
While married to the diplomat Harold Nicolson, she conducted a series of scandalous amorous liaisons with many women, including the brilliant Virginia Woolf. They had an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband had same-sex relationships. Her exuberant aristocratic life was one of inordinate privilege and way ahead of her time. She frequently traveled to Europe in the company of one or the other of her lovers and often dressed as a man to be able to gain access to places where only the couples could go. Gardening, like writing, was a passion Vita cherished with the certainty of a vocation: she wrote books on the topic and constructed the gardens of the castle of Sissinghurst, one of England's most beautiful gardens at her home.

She published her first book Poems of East and West in 1917. She followed this with a novel, Heritage, in 1919. A second novel, The Heir (1922), dealt with her feelings about her family. Her next book, Knole and the Sackvilles (1922), covered her family history. The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931) are perhaps her best known novels today. In the latter, the elderly Lady Slane courageously embraces a long suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy after a lifetime of convention. In 1948 she was appointed a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. She continued to develop her garden at Sissinghurst Castle and for many years wrote a weekly gardening column for The Observer. In 1955 she was awarded the gold Veitch medal of the Royal Horticultural Society. In her last decade she published a further biography, Daughter of France (1959) and a final novel, No Signposts in the Sea (1961).

She died of cancer on June 2, 1962.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars
This is Vita Sackville-West’s last novel, written in the late 1950s. It is set on a cruise and was also written on one. It concerns a political journalist, Edmund Carr, who discovers he has about four months to live. He has no family or close ties and decides to go on an extended cruise, partly because a woman he knows a little is also going on it. Inevitably the book focuses on the nature of life and love and reflections on death. Carr is also an acerbic commentator on his fellow passengers and his own idiosyncrasies as he becomes closer to Laura, a woman he already knew. Carr is quite clear about the reasons for spending his last days on a cruise:
“I want my fill of beauty before I go. Geographically I do not care and scarcely know where I am. There are no signposts in the sea.”
It is obviously quite handy that he has the sort of terminal illness (unnamed) that shows no symptoms and from which you die quite suddenly with little notice. The book itself appears to be Edmund’s random jottings in his journal.
Sackville-West makes her views on relationships on relationships and marriage pretty clear and these reflect the openness of her own marriage. She and her husband, Harold Nicholson both had male and female lovers.
The reviews generally heap praise on this. Haunting, compelling, exquisite, elegiac and so on. There are certainly some good descriptive passages and reflections on life and its end:
“Then come mysterious currents which rock the ship from below without much visible convulsion. Where do they come from, these secret arteries of the sea, tropical or polar? They are as inexplicable to me as the emotions which rock my own heart. I do not let them appear on the surface but am terribly aware of them beneath. Sometimes, churned by a gale, the waters grow angry and the blue expanse turns black and white, tossing us remorselessly, the waves crashing with a sound as of breaking biscuits, the rain hissing as it obliterates all vision, and again I draw the parallel between the elements and the surprising violence I have discovered in myself.”
However much I appreciated the reflective nature of the novel there were some serious issues for me. These related to race and disability and were very marked, particularly those related to race. These were persistent as the ships moves from port to port. Carr is also supposed to have come from humble working class roots, but this doesn’t sit easy with his character and attitudes. These were issues I could not overlook.
“I realised for the first time how greatly our apprehension of people depends on the variation of conditions under which we see them, and thought it possible that we may never truly perceive them at all.”

[Mariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

She little knows what it means to 'the other Edmund' to let himself go and talk to her. The other Edmund has never had such a friend.

I couldn't find again the passage I really wanted. It really said what it means to me to have this and write what I think about, what matters to me, here on goodreads (and in the imaginary in the head conversations). The little magic space of books and dream it more than one place. It might matter to someone else to know about it too. If you never imagined that other people had imaginary in the head conversations and it feels so good to know that they do. The one place I have that isn't quiet all of the time and everything is trivial and moving too fast in front or behind you. The dream of No Signposts in the Sea is just like that. It was the kind of warmth like that. I kind of loved it.

This small book had a staring into the water from a boat quality. It doesn't have to be a boat, anyway, but an above quality. You can't see its depths but you can imagine it is there and all of the strange kinds of fish, more kinds of fish than you ever dreamed were there, rise to the surface. I feel lost to time a little when I stare into water like that. They feel like butterflies in the stomach but fishes swimming inside of you these kinds of thoughts. Edmund Carr has a few weeks to live. He doesn't know when he'll kick but kick it he will. Everything has to matter now and he chooses to wish. It stays a secret. He is secretly in love with someone he doesn't know that well, Laura. She seems happy to see him whenever they do meet and she seems to be glad that he happened to too take the ship voyage she mentioned. If she never knows that he loves her, if he never confides in her. It was a little like a guy I used to know, Will Hunting. "She's perfect right now and I don't want to ruin that." His shrink says that's bull shit and his shrink is pretty much right about that. The wish is buried to the bottom of the sea if you don't ever say it out loud.

I've thought about this throughout my life. Edmund credits strangers confiding in Laura as something within her. They lose something to him. To her. I wanted to argue with them about it and wishing I could talk to people in a book is a more live feeling. A couple she meets confess to her within the first minutes of their acquaintance that they will decide to divorce or not in their trip around the world. I've thought about this so often and considered many possibilities why people would tell something intimate to someone they don't know. The people they do know talk over them and the quiet Laura is the first one who doesn't interrupt them. If something was hard and overcoming it was something you were proud of, and you wanted people to know that was who you felt you were. I think a lot about why it is a virtue to go throughout life never talking about anything that matters to you. I don't feel it is. Some things feel secret but why does that mean that everything has to be to everyone. Of course, I don't talk to anyone in my real life. I haven't really spoken to anyone in a long time. I feel this envy of people who meet Laura and feel as if they could. The reserve in Edmund to do the same breathed around him and I loved how Sackville-West portrayed this loneliness. The bending of his body to hers to be known and that she didn't have him tell the reader that he couldn't bear to be rejected by her. The unknown in her was too frightening. He cannot read her mind. I suspected in the clues and when he couldn't see what I see it was a perfect detective novel of a man who sees what he wants to see.

I loved about No Signposts in the Sea that if they had opened their mouths it would have been so free. The moments they wake up and are surprised to have it, to be easy and natural, were beautiful. I appreciated that so much more than the talkity talk of how things should be. The back home of social gatherings and the news of the day. Everyone must pretend not to care easy breazy. Edmund Carr who used to be a journalist and Laura who seemed to be surrounded by friends. I wished that someone would say to me that there was a difference between solitude and loneliness like she does to him. The dying man wakes up and sees as he did before, the empty date books and the old before thoughts of regret for a life unlived. When the regrets are real and it still feels trivial. I loved this recognition that the trivial was life. It belonged to him and protective of which people you could tell it to and you wouldn't be a loser because you didn't know everyone had to be fake.

The every day on the ship and the things the people talked about. The jealousies of the Colonel's time with Laura. The Colonel's stories, the little things he always seemed to know. Laura's own art of making her surroundings speak for her. It was perfect when a beautiful day on an island is ruined when they realize the villagers making their money from tortoise shell products were throwing the naked bodies into the sea. One out of a hundred managed to grow a new shell. Why did a realization like that have to go and spoil everything? It felt just like I was staring into their depths and something new about them would float up inside of me because I wished to know them more.
Slowly, Laura comes around to letting go and allowing herself to have that. It was so sad that they don't and I loved the hell out of this book because what felt like should be wished for was just letting go and not being fake. That's the longing.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Vita Sackville-West’s last novel, and it is everything that a last novel should be. It speaks of a life drawing to a close, it is elegiac and it is haunting.

Edmund Carr was a journalist, who had risen from humble beginnings to become a political columnist for a leading newspaper, and to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle and move in elevated social circles. When his doctor told him that he only had a few months to live, and that the end would come suddenly and with little pain, he decided to take extended leave and travel on the same cruise ship as Laura Drysdale.

She was war widow, she moved in the same social circles as him, and he had come to care about very deeply. He had not – and would not – speak to her, or to anyone else, about his feelings, or about his illness. He simply wanted to spend as much of the time that he had left as he could in her company.

The story is told by Edmund, and it reads as in internal monologue, but it is in fact his journal, discovered after his death; with the letter he had obtained from his doctor setting out the facts of his medical condition, in the hope that there would be no confusion or misunderstanding of he was taken ill.

The characterisation was pitch perfect, the voice always rang true, and the author’s choice to tell the story this way was entirely right.

As the ship sails towards warmer climes, Edward settles contentedly into life on board and, as there are only a few other first class passengers, he and Laura fall quite naturally into each other’s company. If she remembered had any idea why her friend had decided to take the same trip that she had spoken about, she gave no indication; but as Edmund spent more time with her his feelings for her deepened. He continued to keep his own counsel, but he began to think about how different his life might had he given less attention to his work and more to the pleasures of society and the possibility of love.

Edmund’s equilibrium was disturbed when he sensed that another man might have a romantic interest in Laura. He and Colonel Dalrymple had been on friendly terms, but seeing him in her company made him terribly jealous, and he struggled to cope with his feelings and feared that he would say or do something that would give away his feelings.

Good manners, and well-bred English reticence prevail, and the friendship between Edmund and Laura endures. The watch the sun setting from the deck, they dine together on an island visit, and they watch a lightning storm from her private balcony in the early hours. And as they talk he learns much more about her. She knew little of life outside her own class and milieu, and yet she had nursed in the war and she had worked with the French resistance.

There is little more that that to tie this story to a particular point in history, and not a great deal to tie it to a particular part of the world. The weather is warm, and a string of islands slips by to mark the passing of time, but no more than that was needed.

I want my fill of beauty before I go. Geographically I do not care and scarcely know where I am. There are no signposts in the sea.

The conversations that make up a large part of this book are beautifully realised, and they say much about the characters and much about the author who created them.

The writing is lovely and wonderfully evocative, so that reading really felt like being on that voyage and seeing all of the sights; with the leisurely progress of the boat perfectly matched by the slowly unfurling narrative.

It was such a pity that some prejudicial attitudes towards other cultures and classes caused quite unnecessary turbulence. In books from earlier periods I could accept them as being of their age, but not in a book from the sixties and in this story.

But the story and the characters will stay with me.

It is a simple story, informed by the author’s own travels, published just a year before her death and surely written at a time when she had to consider her own mortality; and the portrayal of Edmund’s realisation of his feelings, and of his resolve to not tie Laura to a dying man, is done with delicacy and with grace.

The resolution of the story is perfectly judged; and the right ending to a short novel – and a writing career – that says everything the needed to be said.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) My second taste of Sackville-West’s fiction (after All Passion Spent). It was her last novel, published just one year before her death, and was inspired by world cruises she and her husband, Harold Nicolson, took in later life. She was at this point already ill with the cancer that would kill her, though it was as yet undiagnosed.

That context goes a long way towards explaining the preoccupations of No Signposts, set on board a cruise ship and narrated by fifty-year-old Edmund Carr, a journalist who has been told by his doctor that he has just a few months to live. He’s embarked on the voyage to be close to the woman he loves, forty-year-old war widow Laura Drysdale. She has no idea that he’s ill, and as the weeks pass and they share tender moments – dinner on shore at an island based on Macao, a lightning storm viewed from her private balcony – he dares to hope that she might return his feelings but still doesn’t tell her about his imminent death, even as she makes tentative plans for excursions they might take once they’re back in London.

The novel is presented as Edmund’s diary, found after his eventual death. It’s full of his solitary musings but also his conversations with Laura, who is refreshingly unconventional in her approach to relationships:

I can’t abide the Mr. and Mrs. Noah attitude towards marriage; the animals went in two by two, forever stuck together with glue. I resent it as much for other people as I should for myself. It seems to me a degradation of individual dignity.

She also tells a story about a lesbian couple she knows who are aging happily together; it feels a bit out of place, but its inclusion is striking given Sackville-West’s history of lesbian relationships.

I’d recommend this short novel to anyone who’s looking for a quick women’s classic with plenty to say about what matters in life.

Originally published with images on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm still quite fond of Vita. I'm still not quite at home with her. I still can't explain just why that is!

And, once again, her book was not at all what I expected! I knew it was about a terminally ill man who chooses to spend his final months on a sea voyage with the woman he (secretly) loves. Reading this, I envisioned frothy, blue prose, a pale, expansive wistfulness. A touch of restlessness. A touch of sensuality. A touch of aristocracy. And, in a way, it is those things. But this is a far more philosophical Vita than I've known. Not a trace of frothy blue! This book is leafy green, vibrant with life and island beauty. It's meditative. It's mature. It's Vita's restless spirit, free and contented at last. And yet...discontented. Unlike most philosophical books, there's no pomposity here. Vita gives no easy answers. I think that's what I like best about it.

Take this passage, for instance:

"So some of them do work for a living," I said.
"Yes, but they will work no longer than they need to earn enough for a day's keep. Then they will down tools and go home."
"No ambition? No thought of the future?"
"None."
Once, I suppose, I should have been shocked. Now, I was filled with amused delight. Meeting Laura's eyes, I saw that she was in sympathy.
A whisper came through the trees, no more than a faint susurration at first, increasing to a patter, a downpour, as the tropical shower descended on the palms and the broad banana leaves, running in rivulets, splashing, bringing with it a refreshment and scent made up of wet greenery and damp earth. Drops rebounded from the leafage in tiny rainbows. Not for years had I been aware of such a sense of peace and satisfaction.
The shower having ceased as abruptly as it had begun, we strolled away, the grasses washing tepidly against our ankles.
Laura said, "To think of those cigarette boxes, those dressing-table objects, those paper-cutters, ending up in an Asprey's front window in Bond Street!"
"It's very cruel really," said our friend, negligently, as though it were a thing he took for granted. "They prise the shell off the living tortoise and then throw the creature back, raw, into the sea, in the hopes that it will survive to grow another shell for their benefit."
"And does it?"
"About one in a hundred does."

Must one always be struck down after a moment of elation?

Indeed.

This book would make an incredible film. It would win awards. Katharine Hepburn would be perfect as the kind but austere Laura. (Alas, there are no more Katharine Hepburns!)

[Lynne King · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compelling story of unrequited love, as only Vita Sackville-West can do.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

She writes beautifully, but I found the narrators lack of self knowledge and emotional intelligence increasingly frustrating

[Ivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely little novel of a man with a terminal illness taking a voyage around the world in order to spend time with woman he's fallen in love with. He doesn't pursue romance as he feels that would be unfair, but he desires her proximity and companionship. The narrative is philosophical, though not uneventful. The prose is vintage Vita - meaning superb - a perfect articulation of mood and thought. It is not the equal of All Passion Spent, but that would be expecting too much - setting the bar too high. This final cruise of both the character Edmund Carr and Vita Sackville-West, for this was her final novel - she died the following year, is both rewarding and satisfying.

[Ben Samson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely lovely. Warm and very sad. Makes you want to throw around words like “elegiac” and “haunting”.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vita and her husband; Harold Nicolson and their friend Edie Lamont – to whom the novel is dedicated, set sail on a cruise of the West Indies and South America in 1959. Vita and Harold had enjoyed cruise life before, yet on this last, sad voyage Vita began writing No Signposts… a novel about dying, unrequited love and how life should be grabbed at with both hands. The novel feels beautifully intimate, bound up as it is life, love, death and travel.

The novel is also shot through with extracts of poetry, reflecting the thoughts of the central characters Edmund and Laura. There is a delicate, elegiac quality to the narrative – which I really enjoyed. I can only assume that Vita was (on some level at least) aware that she perhaps – like Edmund in her story – would not be around for long.

“I want my fill of beauty before I go. Geographically I do not care and scarcely know where I am. There are no signposts in the sea.”

During a week when I felt increasingly hopeless and helpless I felt very much like sailing away on a calm sea, this book felt like perfect reading.

Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2017/...

[Maria Ch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edmund is a journalist who finds out that he has a short time to live due to a terminal disease and decides to spend his remaining time on a journey at sea with a woman he likes Laura. The narrative is in fact his narrative, his stream of thought in regards to the object of his affection. Initially the writing is more general, varying between observations and convictions, going as fas as aphorisms on life as the author ponders on different issues like life, love, happiness. Edmund is a self proclaimed realist, however this is juxtaposed to the more romantic side revealed in his encounters with Laura.

The title alludes to the idea of freedom, of being buried at sea, touching on posthumous fate and deriving from a comment made by the main character. There are no tombstones in the sea, therefore it is easier for one to fall into oblivion. However, when one leaves behind a diary as in the character's case, this idea is challenged and negated.

Throughout the journey, Edmund falls madly in love with Laura and at times the writing takes the form of a eulogy he writes for her, while it changes at times when the character feels threatened by another male on board and his diary entries are predominated by the jealousy that blinds his judgement.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable read and as I was very impressed by Vita Sackville-West that I only knew of because of her relationship to Virginia Woolf, but I look forward to reading more of her books.

[Mary Durrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a lovely novella.
A re-read for me!
Edmund Carr, when he learns he hasn't long to live takes a passage on board a ship where he knows that Laura, a beautiful and intelligent widow whom he secretly admires is a fellow passenger.
I loved it even if it did have a sad ending!

[Clare Flynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having earlier this year completed a round-the-world voyage, I took up a friend's suggestion to read this novella. My aim in doing so was to compare my experience in 2019 with that of Vita Sackville-West sixty years earlier in 1959. So much is unchanged and yet very different. The whole process of taking a cruise in those days was exclusive to the wealthy, the privileged – or in her character, Edmund's case, the dying. Today it's often seen as the holiday of choice for the aged – and more recently as a kind of floating holiday camp. VSW's trip harks back to another age and feels more akin to a cruise in the 1930s than the 60s – understandable, as 1959 marks the transition to the swinging 60s when everything changed – VSW herself died in 1962.

The novella is a first person, diary-form confessional narrative, by Edmund Carr, 50, the leader-writer of a broadsheet – probably the Times. Edmund is a self-made man from a humble background and is less than comfortable among the salons of society that he is sometimes forced to frequent and where he has met Laura Drysdale, a war widow. With a terminal diagnosis - two to three months – he takes a sabbatical from which he knows he will never return and joins the ship on which the object of his love is sailing across the world. The book is largely a 'what if' or more accurately an 'if only" in which Edmund tortures himself with the love for Laura which he can never express.

What VSW captures so eloquently is the monotony of such a voyage, the long sea days, the idle pursuits, the fixed dining companions, the oddness of people being thrown together under circumstances where escape is impossible. Unlike me, she revels in it, loving in particular those long empty passages over a changing ocean under a changing sky. Maybe if I'd read this before I went I'd have found it easier to reconcile myself personally to such a long time at sea. It involves a giving up of control which I found hard to do – yet which Edmund finds in some respects easier in the knowledge that he is anyway dying and will never see the end of the voyage. In spite of this (or because of it) he never gives up control of the two secrets that have driven him to make this voyage in the first place - that he is dying and in love with Laura. The one person he should tell is the very one he cannot – or will not.

Later I discovered that VSW was herself dying when she was writing this on one of the cruises she and Harold took frequently at the end of her life. Edmund as a character is as dense as a block of concrete, desperately in love with Laura yet determined never to let her know and managing to convince himself, despite mounting evidence to the contrary that her affections are centred on the dull but handsome Col Dalrymple. The final scene when in spite of poor Laura laying it on with a trowel he still misconstrues her feelings and struggles to believe that she does in fact love him.

'Dalrymple?' she said. 'The Colonel? Oh, you fool, Edmund,' she said. 'You blind fool!

I cannot think. I dare not think....Folly, folly, folly!

She got up and went, leaving me alone with the lighted ship in the night.

This is a book about love, about ideas of marriage, about companionship, about death. It is often touching, at times moving and frequently frustrating – just as love can be. The constraint and other worldliness of a ship at sea is a perfect way to examine all this in detail - like cracking a walnut, its contents open to display yet still contained within the shell.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

This is the kind of book that really shows how much tendency human beings had towards doing that kind of work colloquially known as "blogging" long before the means became available: writing about whatever in a manner that often heavily indicates the whenever, whether it be current events, personal circumstances, or the shifting of one historical era into the new. It's also the kind of book that doesn't do too well when stripped of its compositional context, in this case the persona of Vita Sackville-West: scion of the British Empire, bisexual aristocrat, panderer to art both in terms of creation and its creators, witness of the shambling dismemberment of her ancestor's imperial sway, victim of cancer a year after this final work of hers was published. The work itself makes little sense in the frame of 'Edmund Carr' and all the sense in the world if you take those momentary queer yearnings of both the male main character and his female muse and put yourself in the frame of SW instead, contemplating her free love life (and dalliances with fascism) and wondering if there was something to be said for the domestic nuclear family after all here, at the end of her days. It's the sort of meditative, borderline maudlin breed of literature that I can admittedly be massive sucker for, but even with all that, SW is too much of the kind of colonialist that sets up nature reserves after sending the indigenous populations on a trail of tears-esque exodus and weeps over the death of a doe while the people who once thrived their drop in droves in utter silence for me to cut her that much slack. So, while I would have loved to be able to love this, or at least really like it, it was the work's overreliance on the sensationalisms of the "exotic other" for plot/pathos purposes that sunk it down into something that is certainly a historical curiosity as much as it is a work of literature, but only for those who are willing to be invested in the kinds of textual engagement, both literary and historical, necessary for understanding it.

Reading this was, in some ways, an exercise in doublethink, where I registered things that I had been trained to find appealing as appealing while simultaneously remaining partially distant form the act of appreciating said appeal. The main character can be easily summed up as a pontificating rag to riches neurotic of a man whose satisfaction with the imperial state of things is only matched by his uneasiness with his sexuality (have to wonder how much of SW's husband is in this portrait), the plot is Hallmark Card levels of 'grew three sizes larger', and the setting of a cruise allows razor sharp control over the interactions of "insiders" with "outsiders" in whatever manner or quantity necessary for creating a seemingly smooth holism of deep contemplation out of a string of variably momentous events. Couple that with the Ye Olde Merry England habitus, and you have a work that 95% of the world is still being trained to appreciate and render their own genuine literary outputs subservient to, and the fact that this isn't doing as well in the public estimation these days is the fact that the early 1960's was apparently 'open' enough for aristocrats to say slurs in public, but not understand that they were slurs in the first place. I'll admit that my heart jumped with glee anytime eroticization of the queer variety reared its head (the main woman character losing a special woman friend around WWII unsurprisingly got me thinking in Woolf terms), but it's the sort of mixed feelings that acknowledges SW's miracle of an open marriage alongside the voracious levels of antisemitism of the marriage partners leading them to almost but not quite join the blackshirts in the early 1930s (a heavy contribution to Woolf and SW breaking up for good in 1935). A work of its time that heavily relies on sentiment, perhaps largely genuine but assuredly at least somewhat contrived, in order to get its pretty yet to the point prose and its significant number of uncredited quotations (my edition's apparently one of those odd ducks that doesn't see the point of providing attributions for such) across to its audience, to various levels of success. It's a book that one is meant to emotionally wallow in until such a catharsis can be meant, and while I'm sure it works for a number of people, my being able to do so depends on shutting too many valves of compassion for my tastes, so I'll take what mixed meanderings I can get and leave it at that.

SW had some level of talent, singularity, and will, but her obscene levels of wealth and status likely helped her achieve her desires as much as it hindered the quality of her achievements, and I imagine all her writing demonstrates this mix between sympathetic deftness and odious presumptuousness that is as far from experimental as something can get. As such, outside of a collection of the letter correspondence between Woolf and SW that I have on hand and SW's 'Portrait of a Marriage' (looking to acquire a more unadulterated form than what is currently available on the market), I don't have any interest in SW's more popular works. There's always a chance that that will change, seeing as how I'm practically guaranteed to tangentially run into her and her compositions whilst in the pursuit of other subjects, but if it does, it's going to do so organically sometime in the far future. I'm rather pleased that my taking on this work during Pride Month was more explicitly called for than I had imagined, but were it not for SW getting with Woolf in a rather amazing fashion back in the day, I wouldn't have much reason to acknowledge her existence save as yet another British woman writer who should've stuck with writing what she knows and saved some of us a lot of headaches. Gloriously emotive in parts, but some authors became dinosaurs of their times even while still alive to publish their works, and this is a piece that exemplifies such.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poor old Edmund Carr. Talk about not seizing the moment. With a mysterious terminal illness Edmund goes on a sea voyage with a woman he is madly in love with but afraid to tell her. Laura and him become close friends sharing experiences of a visit to an island, an electrical romantic storm at sea and conversations.

He mistakenly believes she is in love with Colonel Dalrymple and he foolishly is jealous. In the end after Laura tells of what she thinks is love he misunderstands thinking she is describing the Colonel not him and infuriates her with his stupidity. As a supposedly top journalist he is a lousy listener and communicator.

Overnight the illness catches up with him before he can make it right with Laura.

[Kathrine · Rating 5 out of 5]

The novel is a meditation on life, love, what motivates human beings and contains real insight into the ideas of nature vs progress, the limitations of materialism etc - all very relevant to today, amazingly so.
Very philosophical, beautifully written and a joy to read. I think this is the best Vita Sackville-West have written.

[Ellen · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I had met Edmund Carr on a cruise, I would have abandoned ship at first port of call.

[Mind the Book · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I'm at sea in more ways than one."

Förordet är så lovande, ger Döden i Venedig-vibbar. Det var också en särskild läsupplevelse att ha besökt Sissinghurst dagen före. Ändå undrar jag om just den här inte hade gjort sig bättre som novell. Däremot älskade jag ju hennes All Passion Spent, som jag läste med betydligt större lätthet och entusiasm än något av Virginia Woolf.

Möjligen, möjligen, menade Vita att skriva en parodi på överklassen, men jag blir så provocerad av det där imperialistiska som man, trots anglofili, inte står ut med med Storbritannien; tron att man är bäst i världen, klassförakt, se ner på the riff-raff, the untaught, "black dock hands". Arbetare, have they no ambitions?

Är det ens att resa att åka omkring i en lyxhytt och kanske besöka två basarer i ORIENTEN. Att vara blasé. "I don't care much about Venice", yttrar en karaktär. En passage är till och med antisemitisk, tyckte jag.

Mitt i alltihop slår det mig varför British Airways har behållit flyglinjen med ovanligt låga priser från London till den skraltiga lilla flygplatsen i Genua. (life hack för vidare Italienresor med tåg!) Det var därifrån man steg ombord dessa kryssningsfartyg för färd mot främmande port of calls (så vackert ord). Det kan vara ett av skälen i alla fall.

Den karismatiska karaktären Laura, med en cluttercore-hytt to die for, med balkong, är i princip Vita. Hon har en del subversiva och normbrytande idéer om äktenskapet, som jag gillar: ömsesidig respekt, självständighet, skilda sovrum, ej gemensam ekonomi, varsitt sitting room!

Annars talas det om trängseln i Londons tunnelbana, att träffas i Kew Gardens eller motor down to Kent eller Sussex. Lite bekant livsstil trots att nästan ett sekel passerat.

[Rebecca Alcazaze · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hmmmm, I was expecting something a bit more thought provoking from Vita.

A strangely dated book with lots of ‘ones’ and unlikely surnames with Ys in that are tricky to scan. Also, some (more than latent) racist stereotyping that’s a bit trickier to ‘read around’ in a narrative of the late 1950s that it often is in novels of the C19th.

[Liz Polding · Rating 4 out of 5]

A love reciprocated, but never expressed, this is a sad story of two people for whom it is all too late. The story has a gentle resonance and somehow manages to be strong enough to hold up the weight of the many social theories that the author puts into her characters' mouths. Do real people talk like that? Not really, but it scarcely matters. The ideas are interesting, the book is strong enough to take them. Cerebral and rather touching.

[Sophie Wainwright · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the slow and sure pace of this book and it's elegant structure. The written style and composition suited the simplicity of the story and the fact that from the start, you know how it will end. Reading about the final days of Edmund's life, there is a sense of inevitablity and a continual inherent sadness which is very moving.

[Myrthel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the story did not reach the same level as other novels I read by her I do love her clear open and somehow spacious way of writing.

[Chrystal · Rating 1 out of 5]

Who wants to read a boring book about a jealous man mooning about on a cruise ship for three weeks? So dumb.

[Natalie Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grant freely that this is not great literature, but I was unexpectedly moved by it, and I think it's one of those stories that I'll carry with me.

[bookmateriality · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5...I found this to be quite a superb little novella, but I have downgraded my rating due to the racist undertones/references. Can we reconcile this based on the era in which it was written? :-/

[rachy · Rating 2 out of 5]

On my hunt for something quick and sea/seaside adjacent to read near the beach this weekend, I stumbled upon this little book in my secondhand book store and decided it would do, really only as it fit the criteria and on the strength of Sackville-West’s name. It follows newspaper man Edmund, recently diagnosed with only a few months to live, deciding to spend this time on a cruise ship following the familiar Laura, hoping to spend the last of his life somehow in her orbit. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much of a hit for me, with only small flashes of brilliance amongst an otherwise dull story, equally beset by far too many heinous and uncomfortable stereotypes of its age.

The prose was maybe the only thing I enjoyed about this novel, and it was genuinely well done. Pleasant, but not overly flowery or sentimental. The only issue I really had with it was word choice in the more antiquated sections. Its racism and anti-semitism especially (not to mention the homophobia, etc.) are the most unpalatable sort, egregiously steeped in the most base stereotypes. It’s somewhat expected from certain books of this era, and anyone that reads them widely must find themselves desensitised to it to a certain degree, but this was particularly bad and made me particularly uncomfortable even by those standards.

I’d actually most compare this in one of its more fatal flaws to Robinson’s ‘Gilead’. Another story where it feels like the central character’s proximity to death is simply stated to be used as a contrived device to arbitrarily drive the plot, rather than it feeling like a natural element of the character’s story. Yes Edmund mentions his illness to remind us he is in fact dying, but I feel like this is only strictly necessary because the narrative does not otherwise even imply it. In fact it could be easily forgotten as he hardly appears to be dying, nor do his actions really feel driven by this in any genuinely meaningful way. It’s also just a little too silly to be believable. What person who has such a short time to live experiences virtually no pain or discomfort or any kind of debilitation in this time? Just a little ridiculous for me.

I also do understand the concept here is that he simply wanted to spend the last of his time with Laura, rather than to suddenly try and be with her, but how pathetically he acts (or doesn’t) both feels frustratingly pointless and also simply doesn’t ring true. It also felt like the story moved past what should have been the good parts - they spend an intimate evening alone in a house they were offered, and she later claims it as one of her favourite memories, but for us readers it was a page or two of very quick description with almost no dialogue or interaction between the two characters. Sorry, why am I missing the important stuff? Especially considering the wealth of superfluous detail and overindulgent introspection.

I suppose it’s also a problem of characterisation. Rather than actually mould a genuine character, it feels like our protagonist is expected to simply be shorthand for a well to do, Westminster adjacent man of this era, rather than his own man really. The ending was a little dull too. Not strictly flawed in concept, but executed a little clumsily. Not quite as unsatisfying as ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’, but of the same school perhaps.

I think I might honestly have given this one star if it hadn’t shown some very obvious skill of the craft, because the problems it has have too much of a deep effect on the overall, its hard to even subtract them long enough to try to consider the rest on its own. It is simply not a very original story that is not particular well constructed and is peppered with some of the worst hallmarks of its age as I’ve read from a book in a long time. I’m not sure if this is me writing off Sackville-West’s fiction entirely, but it largely hasn’t endeared me to it either.

[Bob Newman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reticence + Diffidence = Emptiness

Vita Sackville-West had a colorful, interesting life. It might have been a better idea for me to read her autobiography, if she ever wrote one. Some people say that this novel is indeed quite autobiographical, but I would reply, "only in a limited way." This novel features some rather stuffy Victorian poetry, Orientalist descriptions of places that never existed, but are rather tutti-frutti composites of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, all seen with a naturally condescending eye, and the whole unpleasant gamut of upper class English manners and attitudes. Her characters are so careful not to intrude, not to reveal their own ideas or preferences, that they miss love, they miss life itself. The two main characters long for human contact-more especially, Edmund Carr, the chief protagonist, who is suffering from an invisible but terminal illness-but their carefully cultivated aloofness prevents it. I include this sentence as a single example---"....she added, as though fearing that her question might have been too personal, too indiscreet, and also that my answer might involve her into betraying her own opinion..." These are two people falling in love ??
While NO SIGNPOSTS IN THE SEA is cleverly constructed, it is ultimately too sentimental, too Hollywood-ish, and too marked by class prejudices to rate as good literature. I would call it light-weight romance by a woman who should have been capable of much better. Three stars is pretty generous, I believe.

[Léa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 ⭐️

Ma foi c'était très sympa, très fluide et bien construit. L'histoire est simple mais efficace, même en moins de 200 pages les personnages et leurs émotions sont bien construits, et la fin est donc impactante.
J'ai beaucoup aimé la plume aussi (on voit bien que c'est une femme qui écrit Edmund vu la beauté de ses sentiments), un bon livre!

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really do know how to pick them lately--all aging and death. This felt rather offhand without a lot of depth despite the seriousness of the subject.

[Ronan Doyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great poise in this slim, almost addictive tale: Sackville-West's excellent at playing with expectations and dramatic ironies to peculiar emotional effect. Wound up in this mannered comedy is a real streak of deep, soulful sadness that tilts toward tragedy in a ruthless final flourish. Much of its high society perspectives feel a touch queasy today; those some attitudes, though, are the crux of how it gets at something universal.