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Over the Water: Essays on Islands
- GenresShort Stories
130 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 23, 2026
About the author
Various
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If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.
Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 11, 2026
I enjoyed this lovely collection of short essays. They all have an island as a central theme, but explore it from different angles: memory, history, identity, transitions, family, beauty, and nature. I bought this to read pieces by Cecile Pin and Nicola Dinan, my favourite authors. Their essays alone make the book worth buying. The other pieces are bangers too. Some are perhaps more memorable than others, but I found this collection wonderful overall. Highly recommend it for your summer reading!
4.5/5 🌟
4.5/5 🌟
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April 19, 2026Lovely and thoughtful as always. I’m biased but the st ives chapter was my fave
May 18, 2026
13 collected short stories set on islands across the world
The latest in a series that includes In the Garden, At the Pond, By The River and more
Thirteen essays to “transport you to shores far and near“. In the first story author Alexandra Pringle describes a year in her life when she was teaching in Italy. She and Paco take a trip to Isola S Pietro, a small island off the coast of Sardinia. These are carefree days, the weather and the delights of ‘just being’. In the next story the Isle of Lewis is beautifully described, where the author feels “subsumed by nature” and how the perpetual wind in the Winter months served to take over human life, especially someone who is trying to hide whilst processing the sense of self.
Noreen Masud was paid to fly to Tasmania (the “little snip off the edge of Australia“), the home of the duck-billed platypus but it is extraordinarily rare to spot one. However, her luck is in and is over the moon at being so privileged to see one.
Did you know that the Isola d’Elba looks like a child’s drawing of a fish? Spending time on this island offers a period of reflection by author Octavia Bright. A particularly pensive author, Cecile Pin, ponders her time in Phuket, starkly underscored by her reading around the terrible crimes perpetrated on women of her heritage on a different Thai island, Koh Kra. Curiously the reader discovers that Glastonbury Tor is actually an island in Somerset, which is featured in “Leaving Avalon”.
The stories include themes of emigration/immigration, assimilation and the notion of home. The changes and impositions made by colonialists, the choosing of island setting for an author’s novel; and what it means to be “born of” an island. Manhattan features in the final story and in contrast to others is, of course, a very city centric story about a relationship, written by Megan Nolan, whose novel Acts of Desperation appealed to me when it first came out. You can read my review here.
This is such an interesting and eclectic mix of islands, the geography, peoples and cultures, seen13 collected short stories set on islands around the WORLD through personal lenses of the authors. There is certainly learning to be had amongst these well-written and beautifully penned stories.
The latest in a series that includes In the Garden, At the Pond, By The River and more
Thirteen essays to “transport you to shores far and near“. In the first story author Alexandra Pringle describes a year in her life when she was teaching in Italy. She and Paco take a trip to Isola S Pietro, a small island off the coast of Sardinia. These are carefree days, the weather and the delights of ‘just being’. In the next story the Isle of Lewis is beautifully described, where the author feels “subsumed by nature” and how the perpetual wind in the Winter months served to take over human life, especially someone who is trying to hide whilst processing the sense of self.
Noreen Masud was paid to fly to Tasmania (the “little snip off the edge of Australia“), the home of the duck-billed platypus but it is extraordinarily rare to spot one. However, her luck is in and is over the moon at being so privileged to see one.
Did you know that the Isola d’Elba looks like a child’s drawing of a fish? Spending time on this island offers a period of reflection by author Octavia Bright. A particularly pensive author, Cecile Pin, ponders her time in Phuket, starkly underscored by her reading around the terrible crimes perpetrated on women of her heritage on a different Thai island, Koh Kra. Curiously the reader discovers that Glastonbury Tor is actually an island in Somerset, which is featured in “Leaving Avalon”.
The stories include themes of emigration/immigration, assimilation and the notion of home. The changes and impositions made by colonialists, the choosing of island setting for an author’s novel; and what it means to be “born of” an island. Manhattan features in the final story and in contrast to others is, of course, a very city centric story about a relationship, written by Megan Nolan, whose novel Acts of Desperation appealed to me when it first came out. You can read my review here.
This is such an interesting and eclectic mix of islands, the geography, peoples and cultures, seen13 collected short stories set on islands around the WORLD through personal lenses of the authors. There is certainly learning to be had amongst these well-written and beautifully penned stories.
May 17, 2026
The cover of this essay collection is quite misleading. I expected stories of hot sun, tanning on the beach, and tropical nights, and while there was some of that, the collection turned out to be a good example of how one-dimensionally we tend to think about what an island is.
Coming from Northern Europe myself, I don’t often think of cold islands as “islands” in the same way. To me, an island means sandy beaches, lush greenery, colorful birds, and so on.
The essays themselves were thought-provoking, leaning toward melancholy, nostalgic, and existential in tone. Stylistically, they were surprisingly similar. They were also quick reads which is always a plus for this slow reader. These essays made me feel lonely which was interesting because I was alone for days while I was reading this essay collection.
I’m taking off one star because when I picked this book up quickly from a bookstore shelf, I was hoping for stories set in the tropics or Mediterranean adventures - slow days at the beach and chilled wine balancing out the warmth of the sun. Something that I craved coming from a very long winter.
I’m curious to read other essay collections from this series.
Coming from Northern Europe myself, I don’t often think of cold islands as “islands” in the same way. To me, an island means sandy beaches, lush greenery, colorful birds, and so on.
The essays themselves were thought-provoking, leaning toward melancholy, nostalgic, and existential in tone. Stylistically, they were surprisingly similar. They were also quick reads which is always a plus for this slow reader. These essays made me feel lonely which was interesting because I was alone for days while I was reading this essay collection.
I’m taking off one star because when I picked this book up quickly from a bookstore shelf, I was hoping for stories set in the tropics or Mediterranean adventures - slow days at the beach and chilled wine balancing out the warmth of the sun. Something that I craved coming from a very long winter.
I’m curious to read other essay collections from this series.
May 22, 2026
Some lovely little essays in here. Few too many bogged down, however, with rather trite questions of 'belonging' that are rarely resolved with any originality and so appear more than a little self-indulgent (could do with fewer meditations on honestly pretty banal childhood, diaspora experiences).
A couple, too, almost read as advertisements for their authors' recent novels.
Still, the quality of the writing is top-notch, and the stories are often humorous. Just need to be grounded a bit more in the 'present experience' of being, rather than what has been.
A couple, too, almost read as advertisements for their authors' recent novels.
Still, the quality of the writing is top-notch, and the stories are often humorous. Just need to be grounded a bit more in the 'present experience' of being, rather than what has been.
Review of advance copy
Four stars because collections of short stories hardly ever have a 100% success rate but this one had far more hits than misses - some really interesting writing and I appreciated how the stories were divided into sections: island as escape, island as metaphor, and island as home. I do think the opener and closer could’ve been stronger - the ones I loved most were all in the middle.
April 26, 2026
Could’ve been 5 stars if it mentioned Drake’s Island
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews