Penguin The Place of Tides.

by James Rebanks

We are all in need of lights to follow.

One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich, but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on.

Back at home, Rebanks couldn’t stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly – and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island.

This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter, building little wooden huts that will protect the ducks come spring; to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for the woman to gather, like feathered gold.

Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not at all what he had previously thought. As the weeks pass, what began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge and forgiveness.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Memoir, Animals, Audiobook, Biography, Environment

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 2024

About the author

James Rebanks runs a family-owned farm in the Lake District in northern England. A graduate of Oxford University, James works as an expert advisor to UNESCO on sustainable tourism.

Reviews

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came." –John F. Kennedy

Real life Cumbrian farmer James Rebanks was feeling lost. He felt the need to escape many buried feelings, and that created a desire for complete isolation, but true isolation is pretty much a fantasy in the modern world.
Can one ever escape from constant thoughts of grief, work, worry and pain?

James decided to contact Norwegian, Anna, an elderly lady whom he’d met some ten years before. The outcome was that he traveled to Norway, right on the edge of the Arctic, and spent the whole of Spring learning 70 year old Anna’s ways as she cared for wild eider ducks and collected their down, in what was to be her very last visit to a remote island.

This is the true story about one Spring spent on a duck station on a remote Norwegian island for James. However, the star of this memoir is duck woman Anna, who has dedicated many years caring for wild Eider ducks, giving them a safe haven, and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich, but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on.

Anna’s life and quiet wisdom makes James stop see, hear, and appreciate everything around him, slowly helping bring about a self-knowledge and forgiveness, and most importantly the process of healing his mental health. Beautifully told, this is food for the soul.

*Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Press UK for an ARC in exchange for an honest unbiased review*

[Katrina Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Place of Tides is the humbling and inspiring story of Anna, a ‘duck woman’, who dedicates herself to an island’s population of eider ducks. James visits to spend a season with her and her friend on an isolated rocky Norwegian island which, thanks to Anna, provides a safe haven for these birds to nest. In defiance of ecological decline and social judgement, Anna stubbornly resurrected this sustainable tradition for harvesting the feathers and cares for the wildlife and heritage in equal balance.
James observes Anna’s connection to the natural world, the trust that the ducks have in her human presence and the impact that island time has on her physical health. The results of her determination and dedication, as well as her own life story inspire a spark of hope in James and the reader.

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had loved English Pastoral, by James Rebanks, so I was very interested in this book.

It is a very simple, but beautifully told book about a time when he was feeling a bit lost and seeking some solitude. He reached out to Anna, a 70 year old Norwegian woman he had met some years earlier. Anna was one of the last remaining duck women; these were the Women that would go out to the remote islands where the eider ducks came to breed. They would build nests, look after the ducks, and when they left at the end of the season, they would collect their feathers, which were a very valuable commodity. In times past, people could get rich from the feathers, but the ducks have been struggling for years. Already in decline, WW2 was disastrous for them; the were used to people, so when the German soldiers arrived they were easy targets, (not going there). The population was decimated to feed the German army. Later, mini were introduced to the islands so that the islanders could make some extra money from their fur, but the escaped; it seems that was just as bad for the eider ducks as it has been back here for the water vole.

Anna is a wonderful character. Determined to do what she could to preserve the islands and the traditions in the face of modernisation. Get stories about the histories of the islands and her families the to them made for a great read. It was not a subject I knew much about, but it made for a fascinating read.

*Many thanks to Netgally and the publishers for an advance copy in exchange for an honest opinion.*

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the time I first heard about it, I thought this was a strange choice of topic of Rebanks, and, as expected, I found it was the stuff of a long-read magazine article rather than a whole book. In brief, he travels to a polar island of Norway to be apprenticed to an older woman who has long looked after the resident eider colony, making them nests. It is a mutualistic arrangement in that she harvests the down feathers they leave behind.

Rebanks depicts himself as undergoing a (midlife) crisis of purpose and attitude. Being in nature, doing one’s duty, and adapting to change are the lessons he absorbs, and spells out for readers:

“The island was so calming because its routines were simple and repetitive.”

“The island and the wild things are never fully known. There is no end to learning. Anna knows that, and, now, so do I.”

“Anna’s example was simple: if we are to save the world, we have to start somewhere. We just have to do one damn thing after another. Hers was a small kind of heroism, but it was the most powerful kind. The kind that saves us. We all have to go to work in our own communities, in our own landscapes. We have to show up day in, day out, for years and years, doing the work. There will be no brass band, no parade. And we have to accept and keep the faith in each other, and somehow work together. It is the only way we can make our own tiny deeds add up to become the change we all need.”

His writing is as strong as always, but I kept wishing for more story, more of a so-what. After the first third or so, this was mostly a skim for me.

[Tom Mooney · Rating 2 out of 5]

James Rebanks is in many ways difficult to criticise. He writes beautifully. He's almost always either correct, or very convincing. His subject here, Anna, is fascinating.

But this is exactly the kind of non-fiction I don't enjoy. It's a magazine article stretched to breaking point. I listened to over half and, after the opening hour or so, found it almost completely tedious.

[Ruth L. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I understand why some would love this, but for me, it was fine.

[theliterateleprechaun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another author recommended this one during a Zoom book club this week. It was the perfect deck read yesterday in the sunshine.

REVIEW TO FOLLOW

[Joy D · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is James Rebanks’s memoir about the season he spent with Anna Måsøy, one of Norway's last "duck women," on the remote island of Fjærøy in the Vega archipelago. Anna has, for years, been tending to eider ducks to harvest their eiderdown. This is a centuries-old tradition that has dwindled in recent years due to environmental and economic issues. The work involves building and repairing nests, protecting the birds from predators, and collecting and cleaning the down they leave behind. Rebanks embarked on this trip to escape from his own issues. During this experience, he made new friends, increased his patience, and felt the pleasures of caring for nature.

Anna’s health was declining, and this was her final season on the island. They were accompanied by Ingrid, an informal translator and possible successor. The book alternates between the details of work related to caring for the ducks, and Anna's stories about her life, the island's history, and Norwegian folklore. I particularly enjoyed the stories about the mythical huldra. This book will appeal to those (like me) who enjoy peaceful meditations on the relationship between humans and nature. Anna becomes a mentor to the author, and he admires her ability to renew an old tradition, which took years of great care and dedication. It shows how one person’s actions can make a difference in our world.

4.5 rounded up

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hugely enjoyable book, the story of a moment in time, or ten weeks, spent with Anna the duck woman on the tiny duck station of Fjærøy. The book is in tempo with life on the island, sometimes slow and steady like the rain on the roof, sometimes frenetic with wood, nails and seaweed but always, always fascinating as Anna, James and Ingrid prepare for and guard the eider ducks which nest on the island. We can learn a lot about a life well spent and that thorny question of how we prioritise our relationships and personal happiness. I loved Anna, much as everyone who meets her does and loved Rebank’s beautiful book about her. Highly recommended.

[Keri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love James Rebanks and in so many ways this was a beautiful and inspiring book, but it fell flat emotionally for me. He frames the reason Anna isn’t on her family island as a central mystery, but never resolves it. He alludes a lot to his pain and depressed state of mind, but never goes into any detail. It’s all very vague and tangentially referenced. At the end he devolves into a lot of platitudes about the power of connection and work and things like that, but it all felt too distant to resonate.

That said, it is absolutely worth the read, if only to feel deeply what living on a remote Norwegian island feels like!

[CatReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

James Rebanks is an English writer and farmer. His 2024 nonfiction book is a biography-of-sorts of a septuagenarian Norwegian "duck woman" named Anna, who for the last twenty years had been spending her springs on a remote island, building and maintaining nests for ducks in exchange for harvesting their leftover down feathers (eiderdown) after the end of nesting season. Though Rebanks' interviews and shadowing of Anna during a nesting season, Rebanks learns about the history of this traditional, sustainable yet largely dying industry with very modest yields (one would imagine that commercial harvesting of bird down is probably not as kind to the birds, though Rebanks doesn't explore this).

While Anna's story is interesting, I felt annoyed at the excess of philosophical ramblings and attempts Rebanks makes to shoehorn his own life story into Anna's. Plot-wise, there's not much here either -- I was relieved when I finally reached the end of this book.

Further reading: niche and esoteric jobs
Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive by Eliot Stein
Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs edited by John Bowe, Marisa Bowe, and Sabin Streeter
The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster by Sarah Krasnostein

My statistics:
Book 283 for 2025
Book 2209 cumulatively

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at a place and people I knew nothing about. I loved getting to know Anna - what a remarkable woman. This is a wonderful reminder of how closely we are tied to nature and how we need to stop taking that for granted.

[Lilisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the book blurb - the author spends a few months on an unpopulated Norwegian island shadowing a duck woman and friend who spend each year prepping the surroundings and painstakingly building nests for eider ducks in advance of the mating season. They then wait patiently for the eider ducks to arrive, all the while living simply and sparsely as they gear up for more hard work ahead. I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir - a tribute to 70-year old Anna - the duck woman - who is fiercely independent, one with nature, and whose family has been doing this much-loved work for generations. There is so much in this book - learning about eider ducks, the Norwegian islands and landscape, local life and history, and the author’s reckoning with his way of life and the family, community, and nature connections he’s been missing in his self driven, fast-paced, stress-ridden modern life back home in the U.K. Well written, engaging, and so full of interesting insights, I turned the last e-page with a sigh of quiet contentment. I highly recommend this book - a resounding 4 stars! Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

[Gert De Bie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je midlifecrisis verwerken met een heerlijk en innemend boek over één van de laatste beoefenaars van een traditioneel en zo goed als verdwenen Noors beroep? Moet je kunnen.
James Rebanks komt ermee weg in zijn vlot lezend en openhartig relaas over de tijd die hij samen met Anna Måsøy doorbrengt op het eiland Fjærøyna.

Generaties langs trokken de Noorse kustbewoners naar de eilanden om er tijdens het broedseizoen zoveel mogelijk Eidereenden onderdak te bieden en nadien de donsveren waarmee ze hun nesten warm houden te oogsten. Daar worden erg gewaardeerde en kostelijke donsdekens van gemaakt. Anna Måsøy is 'eendenvrouw' en houdt de stiel die haar familie generaties lang uitoefende in moderne tijden - met steun van de overheid - in stand. Als Rebanks haar op een trip ontmoet, is hij danig onder de indruk van hoe ze buiten de tijd lijkt te leven en hoe de wereld op haar geen vat lijkt te hebben.
Jaren later als hij zelf het spoor in zijn leven bijster is, neemt hij contact met haar op en trekt hij een seizoen lang met haar naar het eendeneiland.

James Rebanks brengt de stiel van het eiderdons verzamelen én het verhaal van Anna Måsøy op een vlotte en openhartige manier tot bij de lezer. Net als zijn boeken over het schapenhoeden in de Lake District, spat zijn liefde en respect voor de natuur van de bladzijden.
Rebanks gunt de lezer ook een blik in zijn ziel en spreekt zonder verbloemen over wat hij van Anna hoopt te leren en waar hij zich al dan niet in vergist. Soms mooi, soms wat aandoenlijk, hier en daar op de grens van sentimenteel zodat we ons als lezer hier en daar afvroegen of we wel behoefte aan die inkijk hadden. Maar zonder die persoonlijke openhartigheid had Rebanks waarschijnlijk dit boek niet geschreven en had hij het waarachtige respect dat hij voor Anna's leven en keuzes voelt, niet aan de lezer kunnen overbrengen. Op dezelfde manier hebben we vrede met de soms moraliserende slotbeschouwing omdat we voelen dat die vanuit een oprechte bekommernis voor de mens en zijn omgeving geschreven werd.
Een innemend relaas over een verloren wereld en een verloren ziel.

[Haley Baumeister · Rating 5 out of 5]

I often forgot it wasn't a Niall Williams novel.

This one washed over me with subtle, biting glimmers of beauty like the tides themselves.

(Very different than his other books on shepherding, but I heartily recommend those as well.)

________________________________

“But it wasn’t just that I was tired. I was lost. I’d begun to avoid other people. Just speaking to others emptied me out. I felt overwhelmed and angry at everyone around me. I was in trouble and I didn’t know what to do about it. That was why I’d been drawn to Anna. She had seemed so happy, so sure… radiating a sense of purpose and sureness.”


"I had been drawn to Anna because she seemed heroically tough — and she was tough, but her real superpower was forgiveness. She knew that a life full of other people meant accepting their weaknesses and still being there for them… Anna showed me how much we all need each other, and how empty it is to be alone."


“Human life is full of projection, like we are constantly being filmed in the movie of our own lives. We endlessly shape and reshape our own stories to make ourselves feel relevant or seen, desperate to be the major character. But we don’t end up feeling seen, we end up drowning in noise because everyone else is as desperate to be heard as we are. The world has become a mad shouting match, making us distracted and anxious. I’ve done all these things as foolishly as anyone else and it was exhausting. I was just another duck, huffing and puffing on the foreshore. Anna, by contrast, simply morphed into her surroundings, into the world she had chosen. She wasn’t interested in projecting how important she was. She was whatever was around her, whatever she was doing, whatever filled her eyes. I would ask her thoughts about something and she would shrug and point to whatever the ducks were doing on the foreshore. Her meaning was clear. Focus on this world instead—what is—not on what you think about it. Anna was not a poet… her poetry was her life, her work, and her depth of love for the island. She didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought or whether they listened to her… She was the guardian of this place.”

[Sophy H · Rating 2 out of 5]

I waited for this book for months on a library reserve it was so popular.

Honestly, I'm a bit gutted I didn't enjoy it more. I just couldn't get into it at all. The writing was ok, nothing problematic, but I just felt a sense of general ennui and heaviness throughout the reading. I felt disengaged I suppose.

I don't know what I was expecting so I don't know what I expect could have been different but there we are. Such is life.

So back to the library goes The Place of Tides and onto another book.

[Justine · Rating 5 out of 5]

That was the cheapest way to get to the outer islands of Norway, this book took me to more than just a place, I got to be in a moment and experience, that is now rare and sacred but was once commonplace (and still sacred). I kept getting memories and feelings of my time spent in the outer reaches of the world, the remote far Norths and Souths, while reading this. I loved this book!!

[Caroline Morris · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was kinda difficult to review bc the writing style was nice and the subject matter was interesting, but the author really rubbed me up the wrong way and I just couldn’t look past it

[L · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had hesitated to pick this up because his first book was so grounded in his own world on the family farm and I assumed this would just be his publisher saying, come on find something else to write about, and it would be dull. Ok so I was wrong. Such a beautiful book.
James goes to a collection of islands off the coast of Norway for the spring season, islands might be a stretch - barely submerged rock plateau with a few of the rocks being bigger and larger than others, at least at high tide. This is where the eider ducks come ashore each year to nest, pulling out their own breast feathers to line the nest and keep the eggs warm. But they are fussy and frightened and the duck woman builds them little shelters and nest starters and shoots the otters and minks. At the end of the season she collects the eider down from the nests and cleans it by hand for selling.
This is isolated island life, a throwback to an earlier, simpler time when it was just the ocean and the land and the weather. The author doesn’t get too sidetracked by his internal monologue, just describes what he sees with Anna and Ingrid, the ducks, and the occasional visitor (orcas!)
Also I remember when I was a little girl and one year we all replaced our heavy woollen blankets (but I still have my lovely pink blanket in the loft because you wouldn’t want to throw it away) for these new things called doonas because that’s what they used in Scandinavia. I think that might have been the start of my fascination with this part of the world.

[vicki honeyman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nonfiction writer James Rebanks reflects on his experience working with an elderly woman on a rocky remote Norwegian island on the edge of the Arctic, preparing for and then caring for the Eider ducks who inhabit the island during their mating and egg-laying season. From the arduous task during the bitter wintry spring of creating hundreds of egg-laying nests, many housed in hard to reach rocky crags, to protecting the ducks from their numerous predators as they sit on their eggs during the Scandinavian midnight sun, Rebanks' observation of the centuries-old undertaking of collecting the eider down left behind after the ducks return to the sea is tenderly written with the sense of awe he comes to experience. We learn he chose to "study" and help the woman as an escape from a marriage that was growing apart, yet during his time on the island his thoughts and writings turn on himself, when he questions his patriarchal nature and how he can be a better husband and father upon his return home. Not only is this an amazing look at a culture long forgotten and an ode to the wonders and beauty nature offers, it's also a study on compassion and mercy.

[Booknblues · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I take my reading journey to the islands of the world, I decided to stop by the Vega Archipelago, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in The Place of Tides. James Rebanks who has previously written The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District andPastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey seemed to be at a crossroads in his life and was feeling the shifts brought on my climate change so he traveled north to spend a season with a woman he had met previously and admired:

"Somewhere in me, I knew it wasn’t fair to disappear from the farm and leave my family behind; but, for the first time in my life, I didn’t care. It wasn’t just that I was tired. I was lost. I’d begun to avoid other people – just speaking to others emptied me out. I felt overwhelmed, and angry at everyone around me. I was in trouble, and I didn’t know what to do about it. That was why I’d been drawn to Anna. She had seemed so happy – so sure – out there on her island, on her own, away from the demands of other people."

Anna is a Norwegian "duck woman" who spends her summers alone on an island tending to the eider ducks and later gathering the down they leave in the nest. It is an ancient practice in which humans and eider ducks have a symbiotic. The humans create "homes" for the ducks to nest and protect them while nesting and the ducks leave behind their down for the humans to create quilts, pillows and clothing.

This is a lonely existence but a quiet one close to nature.

"Anna’s life here was, I was coming to see, devoted to paying attention to – or, more than that, being completely committed to – the beauty of the world before her. She seemed to have done it by cultivating an extraordinary form of independence from other people, their values, and their noise. She used every ounce of her wilfulness to shut out the world and concentrate on these simple things."

This season on the island with the ducks has been quite enjoyable for me and I hope others will enjoy it as well.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I seem to be out of step with most reviewers on this book, but generally speaking, it wasn't what I was hoping for. The topic and it subject, Anna, are pretty interesting: somehow this old work of harvesting eiderdown still exists at an intersection of microeconomics, conservation, and folk culture. The role these "duck women" play in eider ducks' successful nesting in Norway is pretty wild, especially given how the environment and society have changed around them. Hats off to Anna et al for doing some really painstaking work to keep it alive.
Why didn't I love the book? Something about the writing didn't really grab me; in spite of the author being a full participant in a season on the islands, the whole experience felt remote and always filtered through his own processing. We get to know Anna - but mostly we get to know how he sees Anna, and how he fills in the gaps with conjecture or imagination. There were so many opportunities to directly quote her more, to make their conversations seem a little more alive, or even to contextualize her story with a lot more information about related things (like: how in the world does this hand-harvested eiderdown fit into the global down market? Which must be immense and probably deeply problematic??). He writes without any irony, "We endlessly shape and reshape our own stories to make ourselves feel relevant or seen - desperate to be the major character." Yes!! You are doing that right now!! Maybe I was just under a misapprehension that this was Anna's story, and in the end it kinda sorta turned into the author's memoir, with Anna providing the food for thought that transformed him into a new person.
There was a lot to like about this, but the execution didn't do it for me. Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!

[Oscar Leigh-Hales · Rating 2 out of 5]

I must admit, I don’t know what I was expecting with this book. I was hoping for some wisdom but only really found it in a few pages. The lady (Anna) is inspiring but I just didn’t enjoy the read. Felt like a chore. Proud I completed it though as I often just give up with these books.

[S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley for the e-arc.
This is not a book I would typically choose, but I was intrigued by the description.
I really enjoyed it and found it very beautiful and inspiring.
A great read that I would recommend.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

The simplicity of this book belies its power and the beauty of the writing. The impact of fishing and pollution, industrialisation, urbanisation, the loss of wild - all so depressing. I read this and now want to spend a spring on Norwegian islands. A slower pace. Quiet. Connection.

[Robert Sheard · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Rebanks’s The Place of Tides is a quietly compelling book, and one I found myself lingering over. The heart of it is Anna—an elderly woman living alone on a remote Norwegian island, tending eider ducks and gathering their down in a practice that stretches back centuries. Rebanks is clear-eyed enough to know this is her story, not his, and that restraint gives the book much of its power.

What I especially admired was the voice: attentive, reflective, and unshowy. Rebanks writes about work, landscape, and endurance with deep respect, while also allowing space for his own self-questioning. His presence never overwhelms Anna’s, but it does give the book an added layer of introspection—about purpose, patience, and what it means to live in fidelity to a place.

It’s a slow, thoughtful book, rooted in seasons and repetition, and all the better for it. A meditation on labor, solitude, and attention, beautifully told.

[Carol Bakker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This peculiar story is the opposite of How to Get Things Done. Or, perhaps, it is about how to get things done ... if that thing is restoring habitat for eider ducks on an island in Norway.

She [Anna, the main character] looked like a queen - not in her clothes or possessions, but in her defiant eyes. Anna had lived in rebellion against modernity. Her belief that it all still mattered was absolute, unshakeable — a gift from God.

Once upon a time, Norwegian folk found a way to make a living between a dangerous ocean and a backyard of rock. They fashioned tiny enclosures for eider ducks to lay and hatch eggs. After the ducks left, they painstakingly harvested the eider down for pillows and quilts.

During World War II the Germans slaughtered the ducks for food, and the eider down tradition disappeared. Almost. A few individuals still spend seventy days in the spring on uninhabited islands building and repairing duck houses, collecting and drying seaweed, making nests, being quiet, practically disappearing so the shy ducks will come on land, and shoo(t)ing the ducks' predators who want a tasty egg or two. So few, that now there is only enough eider down harvested to make twenty quilts.

James Rebanks joins Anna and her friend Ingrid on the island of Fjærøy (The Place of Tides) to watch, work, and witness. It is primitive. The work is alternately physically demanding (outside work in rain and mud) and attention-demanding (watching ocean, studying tides, environment, behavior of different seabirds).

I use the term "reading intersection" to mark when the books I've been reading start talking to each other. Reading Rebanks made me remember other books:

• This year, especially, I've been reading about the love of place.
Rick Bass, The Wild Marsh
John McPhee Coming into the Country
Niall Williams In Kiltumper - A Year in an Irish Garden

• Reading about Norway
The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of Asbjørnsen and Moe — I never heard of this book until it showed up on a baby shower wish list this spring! It was referenced in Rebanks' book.
Ingrid Unset, Kristin Lavransdatter

• Reading about geographic names
Robert Macfarlane, Landmarks ← "We [Lake District folk] were the same people, divided only by a sea and a thousand or so years of history. I understood many of the things Anna said in her own tongue without translation. ... Beck. Fell. Thwaite. Lowp. Sieves. Laik. Yam. Scribble." I loved that the islanders called a wheelbarrow a "land boat."

• Funeral customs
Thomas Long, Accompany Them with Singing - The Christian Funeral Rebanks writes, "When someone died, the singing would begin. It was the tradition to have a 'singer for the dead': someone who sang with the corpse in the home, while people came to pay their respects, and who would keep singing as they went across the waves, taking the body to be buried on Vega. They wouldn't stop until the priest took over singing at the church door."

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not something I would usually pick up, but I really enjoyed this. James Rebanks spends several months on a small island off the coast of Norway with an older woman, Anna who has spent many years preparing for the arrival of and caring for large numbers of nesting Eider ducks, waiting for them to hatch their offspring and take them back out to sea, in order to collect the down they use to line their nests, to the turn into Eider Down duvets. The book that came out of his time helping her and her friend/colleague Ingrid is absolutely fascinating, not only as a glimpse into an almost forgotten way of life, but also how living in a very small community, with a very specific purpose, can alter your perspective on life. Now I'm not saying I would want to do it myself, or that I would be of much use if I was on the island, but just knowing there are people out there doing things you never dreamed of is inspiring in itself, and you cannot help but admire those who keep these traditions alive.

[Aga · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not finish. I gave up about 40% in when, after hours of reading repetitive sentences (there are only a couple of subjects: we talked in the hut, I read my book, Anna is unwell, the islanders differ from the mainlanders, there are no ducks yet, the sheds need mending and the kelp needs drying and I challenge you to find a sentence not related to these) the author stated “we’ve been on the island for a week” and I felt they’d been there for years.

I feel this would have made a wonderful National Geographic documentary. You know, the cover feature. With beautiful photos of Anna and Ingrid and a text of a longer article accompanying it. The duck women are fascinating, and I do get the idea to write a contemplative book when not much is happening. But this, to me, was beyond contemplative and much into boring.

I cannot escape the comparison with “Hiroshima” by Hersey I have read just before this, and how succinct and yet emotional it was.

[Eliza-June Aiken · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book pulls you deep into the lives of frail, elderly Anna, a Norwegian duck, woman. She is one of the stitches that hold a way of life that goes back aeons delicately in the 21st Century.

James weaves the story gently, respecting Anna and her friend Ingrid’s approach to their summer on the island, preparing for the Eider's arrival, protecting the nest and then stepping away from the Landscape and returning to their other lives.

Do not expect high-speed drama, there is plenty of drama, but it unfolds. Whether memories of the past or threats to the ducks in the here and now. Do expect a book that delivers with a lightness of touch and you will want to read on and on. It will leave you moved and changed.

Anna gains strength from the island and is determined to be part of a successful duck season. The ducks she understands are part of her emotional DNA.

James Rebanks steps into the aging Anna’s realm. No longer her solitary place, with assistant Ingrid who is learning the necessary nature lore of being a duck woman. Rebanks writes in a distinctive style that pulls the reader close as he unreels the narrative of life before, during and after the eiders. He is the interloper but not a passive observer he is drawn into the work assisting Ingrid, he is the student she is now the teacher. The writing style is immersive, the narrative cloaks you in an eiderdown of carefully crafted words. The story is more than the down left to be collected and cleaned at the end of the season. It is about regaining what is important and what we have lost as we speed through life governed by material possessions.

This a story that captures nature not through rose-tinted glasses, of a plucky heroic woman. It is a testament to Anna’s stubbornness, hard work and understanding of how traditions are at the heart of society. This is nature red in tooth and claw and toxic human relationships. The cement throughout the book is the story of the family, the Eiders and Anna.

A beautifully observed memoir of a way of life, hanging on despite so many obstacles for the Eider duck. The ducks have many predators, the natural animals and mink. Mink, we took to the islands to profit from their fur. The narrative ebbs and flows with Anna's memories and through her words and generosity of spirit, we step into her thoughts and understand, the pull of nurturing a haven for the Eiders to flourish. This is achieved by the skilful narration by James Rebanks. Place of Tides never preaches it is the unveiling of a landscape which without his words would remain an unknown way of life.

The Eider ducks need more Annas. Nature needs more Annas, individuals who give their time and effort to understand and be guardians of this precious and vulnerable world.

The Ducks from the sea need our help; sand eel stocks are being depleted, resulting in mother ducks arriving underweight. Hunger is driving the Eider back to the sea, their eggs remain unhatched.

Nature is a delicate balancing act. This book reminds us of our role in upsetting the equilibrium of climate and habitats. Somehow, we must quickly learn to live in partnership with nature. To cease extracting everything that can be bought and sold. This is our world and theirs.

Place of Tides evokes a landscape managed, controlled, and destroyed by the ebb and flow of salt water. A landscape of islands where weather is the sixth sense shaping a person’s experience day and night.


The Place of Tides reminds the reader of what we should value and what is important in life.

‘She looked like a Queen – not in her clothes or possessions but in her defiant eyes. Anna lived a rebellion against modernity.’

Be more Anna is my clarion call. Observe and act and understand the importance of nature’s ebb and flow.

Place of Tides by James Rebanks, published by Allen Lane, Penguin Books on 27th October 2024.