The Sea Inside

by Philip Hoare

A startling new book, his most personal to date, from Philip Hoare, winner of the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize for Leviathan. The sea surrounds us. It gives us life, provides us with the air we breathe and the food we eat. It is ceaseless change and constant presence. It covers two-thirds of our planet. Yet caught up in our everyday lives, we barely notice it. In The Sea Inside, Philip Hoare sets out to rediscover the sea, its islands, birds and beasts. He begins on the south coast where he grew up, a place of almost monastic escape. From there he travels to the other side of the world - the Azores, Sri Lanka, New Zealand - in search of encounters with animals and people. Navigating between human and natural history, he asks what these stories mean for us now. Along the way we meet an amazing cast; from scientists to tattooed warriors; from ravens to whales and bizarre creatures that may, or may not, be extinct. Part memoir, part fantastical travelogue, The Sea Inside takes us on an astounding journey of discovery.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Travel, Science, Memoir, History, Environment

350 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Philip Hoare is an English writer, especially of history and biography. He instigated the Moby Dick Big Read project. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton and Leverhulme artist-in-residence at the Marine Institute, Plymouth University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2011.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to give up after this.

"Like the ermine, said to prefer to die rather than soil its white winter coat, the swan is pledged to maintain its whiteness, as immaculate as the newly laundered shirt of an African schoolchild."

Page 40.

It's not racist, I don't think. It's just a bit dumb.

Explanation?

What does he mean by African schoolchild? An Egyptian kid? A Moroccan? Tunisian? Black South African? Chris Froome 20 years ago??? (#@$$#!!! FFS).

We all know what he means. Dark black skin contrasts with gleaming white shirt. But why go there? And the assumption that the reader shares this narrow and limited worldview to get the metaphor? That's the problem.

I struggled a little with the meandering observations. But was willing to cut him some slack to see where he was going. There was a certain forced quality to his poetic descriptions I was happy to overlook as it was also interesting to follow some of his personal insights, even though they said little about anything other than his own thoughts. But that metaphor, maybe I would have been okay with from an author a few generations back, but not now.

And now, trying not to value sunk costs, I cut my losses.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine piece of nonfiction wherein the author discovers that he is homeless. Perhaps we all are. A book of grief for lost worlds, lost creatures, and lost loves, especially the author's mother -- it reminded me of nothing so much as the famous Kafka quote: "A book must be an axe for the frozen sea inside us." It also extends and plays with the powerful British tradition of natural history writing up to and including Hoare's contemporary Robert Macfarlane. The two could've been cut from the same cloth, whether their acknowledged antecedents are T. H. White, Edward Thomas, or, in the case of both, J. A. Baker. A deeply satisfying read, filled with arcana, written in such unadorned prose that it nearly attains the level of poetry.

[Always Pink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely, at the same time amusing and strangely humbling book. I actually had started to read it last year, but got stuck somewhere in the very first chapter, falsely thinking it no equal to Hoare's "Leviathan, or The Whale" which I had loved. - Now I am glad to have taken it up again, as it would have been a pity to have missed out on this very idiosyncratic book. In its pages we follow Hoare's seemingly aimless wanderings, his meandering and musings, his travels, his quests, his interests, his loves, his fixations even. Seen through his eyes, birds, dolphins, whales (of course...) and extinct species like the Tasman Tiger reveal themselves as fascinating symbols, powerful totems of a sadly and quickly vanishing natural world. But he does not only excel in describing animals as well as historical oddities, his one or two pages on London count among the best descriptions of the city I have ever read. The glittering prose of these paragraphs are only surpassed by the few and short splinters of probing self-analysis Hoare sprinkles over his text. For example these lines, taken also from his London chapter: "I was defeated and enthralled by the scale and sprawl of the capital which spread like a stain from its river. I descended into gloomy basements made glamorous by punk and all that came after, caverns in the dreariness, sparking into energy and abandon. I learned to drink and take drugs and dress for each night as if it was the first and last. I wanted to relive the posters on my wall, to escape my origins. And yet I always wanted to go home."

[Bettie · Rating 2 out of 5]

BOTW

The Sea Inside

Fradio> R4> BOTW
Nonfic> Memoir> Travel> seven seas
Next

Blurb: Over 5 episodes, abridged by Katrin Williams, the author Philip Hoare tells us about a lifetime's association with the sea. The sea that is local to him and other seas that wait in far flung parts of the world. He walks by them, dives into them, and is wholly inspired by them.

1: The family house is now empty and the author uses it as his base. Nearby is a 'suburban sea', which lures him every day..
2: Philip Hoare recalls his early London years, a place full of watery stories, past and present, which concludes with the subject of whales.
3: Sri Lanka. Crack of dawn. Aboard the Kushan Putha. On the glassy surface a sight of fins, then flashes of colour, then something magnificent appears.
4: On the deck of a boat in New Zealand, the author sees a huge grey shape - and it is straight ahead.
5: Travelling the world, yet it is the 'suburban sea' of childhood that draws the author home

Reader Anthony Calf
Producer Duncan Minshull.

I love nature and travel non-fiction, yet dislike the airy-fairy overtures on show here; was so laid back, it fell over.
Next

[Charlotte Kingston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite, meandering, rich discussion of many things maritime and some less so. The descriptions of swimming close to whales and dolphins are sensuous and otherworldly. Where they verge on the romantic, this is neatly undercut with a sense of absurdity and the bumb back down to earth. The ending will surprise you, as all of a sudden the book takes on a very different tone and you realise that the sea inside might not be the thing you thought it was all along.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a difficult book to quantify; it is not all about the sea; just a series of anecdotes, stories, histories and tales that are in some way or other linked to the sea. His main philosophy here is that we are all derived from the sea, and are still made from water, and he quotes Arthur C Clarke, who says that the third planet from the Sun would have been more aptly named Sea, rather than Earth.

The interaction with the sea has defined this island, and what Hoare does is weave his daily interaction with the sea and landscape around Southampton with stories of people, creatures, history, mythology and the future of the ocean environment. The stories are in no particular order, and are loosely linked, in a meandering sort of way. He is a big advocate for the natural world, whales and dolphins in particular, and recounts his swimming with several types of them.

It is such a difficult book to categorise, in some ways it reminds me of the meanders of a river, and it is not focused in the way that Levathian was. That said the writing is exquisite at times, and he conveys his emotions and feeling for a huge passion of his.

[Adrian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Non-fiction isn't something that very often appeals to me, I'm not very good at reading it and tend to drift off pretty easily. But I'd been hearing so many great things about Hoare and this book that I thought I should jump in and give it a go! Boy am I glad I did? Hoare's writing is just sublime. It doesn't read like non-fiction. It reads like the most beautiful, poetic and exciting fiction you can imagine. It meanders (and I mean that in the best possible way imaginable) through all these wonderful lands and creatures and anecdotes all linked by the sea. It explores the human condition and how we relate to nature. It made me feel closer to a nature I often spurn and feel alienated from and it made me see things in a new light that I'd never even considered before. What more can you ask of from a book? There isn't a moment where I was bored and I was very sad to see it end.

[Kimberly Eyre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leviathan is one of my favorites. This isn't. It is an interesting, quirky read with at times evocative descriptions and intriguing facts. I think its shortcoming is it that there is too much of the author in it, his experiences, reactions and emotions to the sea and its inhabitants, both human and animal. There is not enough ocean. There is not enough writing unconcerned with the stories of people to give me the space to contemplate my own love-affair with water.

[Nick Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rich and varied tapestry of the history, geography and biology of the oceans and the surrounding shores, this was a pleasure. Full of stunning little factual elements, these and a degree of self-control meant that the author never quite moved over into the 'annoyingly pretentious' sort of voice/format that some authors (e.g. Robert MacFarlane) do stray into a little too often for my tastes. This book having a more 'scientific' than 'literary' focus too made it a more enjoyable read for me than some others of the same general type, as was the quietly personal nature of the narrative - Hoare putting himself as 'insignificant observer of amazing things' as opposed to 'amazing observer of insignificant things' (I'm again looking at the more 'Bear Grylls' moments of MacFarlane and his ilk, describing how they hiked three hundred miles in a hurricane and bivouacked in a gully eating only seaweed in order to gaze over a barren landscape at dawn like might have been described by an obscure Gaelic poet). The only reason I didn't award this five stars was that the second half did get a little repetitive regarding the author's keen interest in cetaceans, some of which didn't hold my attention as well as other parts of the book.

[Ilse · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.
The sea inside is a nonfiction book that discusses the creatures living in and around the sea, together with the relationship between humans and these creatures through time. This book is divided into nine parts, in each of which the author talks about a specific area of the sea -its creatures and history- while visiting the self-same place. Therefore, you get his own experience in seeing these places and animals as well as learning about them.

I found this book highly interesting and nicely put together. I especially enjoyed the parts in which the relationship between animals and humans in the past was discussed (with regard to colonialism, discovering new species and excessive hunting). My only critique has to do with the writing style. The author used overly flowery and heavy language in the parts in which he describes his own experience at seeing the sea. Luckily, this happened only in small sections of the book.

[Diana Lempel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Sea Inside by Philip Hoare is not really about the sea. It’s about the invisible and unknowable, both within us and beyond us – about barely-known whale species and possibly extinct creatures from remote islands. It’s also about the state of remoteness itself. The sea that separates hermits on their rocky island from the world that they can’t find a place in. The sea he swims in, at once afraid of it and buoyed by it.

The book follows a loosely told travelogue of ocean exploration, from Hoare’s hometown of suburban Southampton (UK), to the Azores, Tasmania, and the southern island of New Zealand. It’s clear that this project grew directly out of Hoare’s previous, acclaimed, book The Whale, and the author’s general obsession with all things cetacean (he appears on the rear book jacket flap in a t-shirt printed with a Bowhead -- or maybe a Right? – Whale), as his trips do not follow a narrative but rather opportunities to dive with rare whales and dolphins. Line drawings of whales, dolphins and birds wander across the pages.

Woven in between these journeys is a series of biographies in miniature, both human and animal. The biographies are not of whales, but of other creatures to whom Hoare ascribes the ideas of lost-ness, imagination, and misunderstanding that are his themes. The corvids (ravens, crows, and jays) receive redemptive treatment early in the book, and Hoare returns to them, and seabirds like the albatross and the gull, as a talisman throughout. “They’re an alternative community over our heads; gypsy birds, a mysterious race with their own hinterland. They live on the periphery in the way that all animals do, existing on the same plane as we do but inhabiting another time and place” (23).

Another memorable profile is of the Tasmanian tiger, a terrifying striped marsupial that was likely driven to extinction by the twin destroyers of science and sport. This book filled with dissections (I made the mistake of reading Hoare’s detailed account of a porpoise autopsy while eating my dinner of Vietnamese noodle soup) and creepy science museums (the Hunterian Museum and its founder makes several appearances); London menageries with cages barely larger than the animals; exhumations of human “oddities” such as toweringly tall Irishmen and the last members of a harassed Oceanic people. Hoare is urgently, but cryptically, underlining throughout the book that our desire for knowledge consistently kills what we want to understand most.

It may be no surprise then that most of the time that Hoare spends on people he spends on hermits, writers, and mystics who retreat from civilization, seeking the company of animals without the human zeal for possession and cataloguing. Many of these men are also gay. Somehow this seems a dual retreat, in Hoare’s portraits, as if these men had renounced the structure of family and the promise of a posterity, in exchange for the mysteries of the wild. He begins his touching and tone-setting portrait of T.H. White (author of The Once and Future King), this way: “In the summer of 1936…T.H. White was busy training a goshawk. His friends found this ridiculous, and told him so” (113). These men who leave polite society are a bit ridiculous. St. Cuthbert, also an island recluse, is known as the patron of eider ducks.

There are more hauntingly absurd man-and-animal relationships that thread through the book, stories that probably Hoare felt he couldn’t ignore. He drags Coleridge’s heavy albatross from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” across the sea, and Ahab’s obsessive hunt for Moby Dick through the Pacific. There is a note of obsession that bleeds from these two touchstones into the rest of the book. The whole book is an act of obsession, Hoare’s obsession with whales, of seeking some kind of presence with the animal world, whether through scientific research, historical account, or physical experience. His swims with whale communities surge with sensory detail and a feeling of love, but also loneliness. Because he can’t, really, ever understand.

We get a bit throughout the book of Hoare’s life. He grew up in suburban Southampton, where the book opens, and has returned home after his mother’s death. He has had some kind of health crisis, and spent some time in the hospital. The “sea inside” himself is as much a mystery as the sea he travels throughout the book.

At times I felt like this book was also a mystery, as filled with sightings and losses as an attempt to track a migrating swallow from Africa to British Isles. The geographical scope is so vast, as is the range of reference literatures – there are New Zealand aboriginal folk tales, Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and a healthy heaping of marine biology – that sometimes it feels not like a story at all, but rather a wander through Hoare’s seeking, questioning, wandering mind. Perhaps this feeling of wandering is what motivated his frequent references to the navigation instincts both of whales and of birds. Sometimes the narrative disappears like the ziphids he meets in the Azores, bottlenosed whales that disappear for long stretches deep beneath the sea, so that they are nearly undetectable, except for the clicks you can hear from an underwater microphone.

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Sea Inside" matches his "Leviathan" meandering through the history, lore, and lure of the sea. Hoare has written a moving book about loss - both natural and personal - that deserves a wide audience.

[Rock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me ha roto el corazón

[Karen Mead · Rating 1 out of 5]

After reading some science books on ocean life, I was ready for a more poetic take on the sea. This book is certainly that, but it's so self-consciously poetic that I found it annoying. The author is constantly throwing in metaphors, and the book seems to lack focus; one minute it's about the author's running route, then the history of this one woman who lived nearby, then ravens and their behaviors, and it just seems to drift aimlessly. Maybe that was intentional, but I couldn't get into it.

I think I'm typically pretty good at judging books on what they actually are, versus holding them accountable to my preconceived idea of what I wanted them to be before I started them. Maybe I've made that mistake here, but for whatever reason, I couldn't get into it. It seems self-indulgent and rather pointless.

[Jasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved everything about this book. Picking it up randomly at a bookstore in London, I realized it was the same author who wrote "The Whale", so I immediately purchased it. I like non-fiction written in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way, I love the ocean, and there is a lot about the UK in general and also about whales (the animals, not the country, which kept confusing people when I said I was reading a book "mostly about England and whales..."). Lovely little illustrations, and it also has a good chunk about thylacines (which also fascinate me).

[Ross · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book but I couldn't get into it. I guess it is my fault. I bought it on a whim, after i selected it and took it to the counter I realized it was $35!! I debated putting it back but ended up deciding that it seemed special enough. I tried about 50 pages and put it down. A couple of weeks later I tried again, and again I put it down.
It's just too out there and artsy for me, it didn't hold me and I felt as if I was lost in the ocean with no land in sight..

[mantareads · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. I've never read any writing like this: the topics are so amazing! But the writing is so astonishingly nondescript and banal.

Some reviews have said the prose is "too airy fairy", but I think the problem is more that the imagery and metaphors selected are so colourless that they dont evoke any sort of emotion in the reader at all.

Despite the promising title, there is very little reflection, and too much description...that doesn't really pay off either.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

From BBC radio 4 - Book of the Week:
Philip Hoare celebrates a lifetime's association with the sea. Abridged by Katrin WilliamsPhilip Hoare celebrates a lifetime's association with the sea. Abridged by Katrin Williams.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written, lyrical book that I enjoyed immensely. One chapter set in Tasmania was particularly heartrending when Hoare talked about Truganini and the Tasmanian tiger - both hunted, both extinguished in a heart beat, both unfairly treated afterwards. I will be finding more of this guy's books...

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Underwhelming. The writing itself rang a bit hollow, like the author was trying too hard and coming up short. The science was a bit on the light side for me, and overall, I just didn't get a whole lot of out of it. My expectations were high, given the subject matter, but alas, they were not met.

[D · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thought "The Sea Inside" would be about the sea, as I enjoyed "The Whale". But the author spends a lot of time rambling about everything else. I could not get into this book. Too much random information took me down side paths and left me wondering, "What is the point of this book?"

[Philip L · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book interesting, while at the same time a little hard to get into. A slow starter which probably deserves a rating of more like a 3.5 - 4.0. Philip Hoare writes about our relationship with the sea. He does it by visiting several different ocean sites and the creatures that live there. The bird life, whales, sea lions, and even land animals that live in or interact with the sea. He starts with the seaside where he lives, Britain's Southampton Waters and the seascape around London and the Thames. From there he heads out and visits The Azores, Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines exploring the relationships between the land and the sea and how that impacts birds, mammals, fish & humans. In doing so he also gives histories of the areas he visits. This part was at times interesting, but also sometimes a little hard to get through in that he tended to get a little long winded in these parts. All in all, I found the book interesting and I did learn something from it which is always what I set out to do in reading.

[Vendedor de rápida · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leer 'El mar interior' es navegar por un océano. No tanto por su extensión sino por la variedad de lugares, climas, personajes y animales a los que le va llevando Hoare: la isla del Canal de la Mancha desde donde el escritor T. H. White deseaba la extinción de la Humanidad e ideó que la edición de su libro sobre la pesca en Escocia llevara una escama de salmón en cada ejemplar, la mansión octogonal de un islote en el extremo sur de Ceilán donde Paul Bowles se retiró dos años a cumplir con la cita de Kafka que le obsesionaba ("A partir de cierto punto ya no es posible el retorno. Ése es el punto que debe alcanzarse"), las inolvidables escenas de inmersión con ballenas azules de 20 metros, la realidad y la leyenda de la extinción (supuesta) de los tigres de Tasmania. Todo un afán enciclopédico, si no fuera tan caótico como un tratado medieval, siempre con la curiosidad como motor.

Ese deseo de conocimiento, el que mueve al ser humano a diseñar "un láser que rebota en ambos extremos de la ballena y calcula inmediatamente su tamaño" en Hoare se transforma en otra cosa, "en los rayos que conectan la mirada de Dios con sus santos en las pinturas medievales". En un pasaje impresionante, la condición analítica de la mirada no queda limitada en exclusiva a la condición humana y sus oscuras intenciones depredadoras: "una ballena o un delfín pueden ver el interior de mi cuerpo [con su especie de sónar] con tanta precisión como yo puedo vewr el exterior del suyo; debo parecerles uno de los monigotes educativos que teníamos en la escuela, figuras de plástico transparente de un hombre y una mujer con sus órganos internos impúdicamente expuestos. Para los cetáceos el mundo está desnudo".

Ojalá la inteligencia artificial empezara a servir ya para algo útil y fuera capaz de traducir fluidamente del cétaceo al inglés y a la inversa.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't sure I would finish the book after reading the first two chapters, but started to really enjoy Hoare's style of writing and thoroughly researched stories. The book gives a great insight into the natural world unknown to us and the relationship between the sea, its islands and the expansion of human civilisation, highlighting how exploration affected wildlife on land and in the water. It might not be one of the most uplifting reads, but definitely eye opening and full of historical facts, adventure and stories about the natural world presented in a thoughtful and wonderfully descriptive manner.

[Simon Burgess · Rating 5 out of 5]

A happy chance find amongst the SPCA opportunity shop books! Full of fascinating coincidence in this big but also small world, from my partner's life experience on the Isle of Wight to my own friendships, reading and travels here in NZ, and a damned fine erudite exposition on the sea, it's lifeforms and world around us. He challenges me to look carefully at my approach to the world and take more heed. Evermore convincing, he writes as a person and a scientist with feeling and a connection to his experiences at a human level.

[Jenneth Graser · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful prose, haunting imagery, like poetry in motion across a living and dying plethora of animals and history, from different corners and niches of the world. But a heavy sadness prevails of the destruction human beings wreak on these precious animals and on each other. Some of the encounters in the ocean and with birds are from another world. But these glimpses of beauty are fleeting. And ultimately the education imparted is a desire for change, for people to realise what is happening to our planet before it's too late.

[Madeleine McDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

One to keep and dip into now and then. The author has a magpie mind, and the book holds fascinating nuggets of history, geography, literature and philosophy, all linked in some way to the oceans. Worth reading for them.

Although his prose does contain images that made me smile, for example, "..the guesthouse, in a room made smaller by lace and chintz...", overall the long sentences and flowery style were exasperating.

[Alib · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the nature but not so keen on the history, so at times I was in delight and awe at the beauty of the scenes; then it would drag. This man clearly loves whales (and seabirds) - it is more about cetaceans than the sea but nicely put together with chapters set in different locations and lovely language. I do wonder why and how he arranges his close encounters with these sea creatures - we don’t really find out - perhaps it was just research for the book. Different and worth a read.

[Madi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once you acclimatise to the flowery prose, The Sea Inside is a fantastic, meditative reflection on the world's oceans, their creatures, and the ways our own history is entangled with them.

But that prose is tinted a heavy purple, and could use a thorough edit. With a similie shoved into every second line it gets tiring at points. So one star off an otherwise wonderful and very unique book.

[Leia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was unfocused and overly flowery in style. There were too many nods to colonialism that were not self-aware enough for my taste. An Englishman discussing his ancestors in whaling and slave owning but did not seem to reflect on the pain or horror of said pursuits. The only reason I didn't give this 1 star is that I love natural history and there was a fair amount sprinkled through.