Tide Race

by Brenda Chamberlain

Tide-race is a remarkable account of life on Bardsey (known as Ynys Enlli to Welsh speakers), a remote and mysterious island off the coast of North Wales. Painter and writer Brenda Chamberlain lived on the island from 1947 to 1961, during the last days of its hardy community. The combination of Bardsey, ancient site of Christian pilgrimage, wild and dangerous landscape, and Brenda Chamberlain, Royal Academy trained artist, results in a classic book, vividly illustrated by the author's line drawings.

This edition includes an Afterword by fellow artist Jonah Jones.

Genres: Nature, Memoir, British Literature, Nonfiction

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Brenda Irene Chamberlain was a Welsh artist, poet and novelist. She also wrote a memoir of 15 years spent living on Bardsey Island. She won the first two Gold Medals awarded by the National Eisteddfod of Wales in the Fine Art category, for her paintings Girl with a Siamese Cat (1951) and The Cristin Children (1953). An expatriate on the island of Hydra, Greece, from 1961 to 1967, she then returned to Wales, where she died in 1971. Her papers are preserved by the National Library of Wales; examples of her artworks are found in several collections.

Reviews

[beyond_blue_reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5/3. I'm obsessed with Ynys Enlli - the remoteness, the hardship, the sacredness; the strange mingling of death, saints and the sea. But this was a bit like reading someone's unedited diary - bitty, and quite monotonous after a while.

There are some beautiful poetic descriptions of island life, its mythology, and the precariousness of living at the mercy of the sea.

The prose is punctuated with some of Brenda Chamberlain's own sketches, and a few poems. But mostly it's day-to-day island accounts and a LOT of tea on the locals (which apparently they were not impressed with, and banned her from coming back).

Loved the magical encounter with the seal at the start. My interest trailed off towards the end, but it's a treasure trove for anyone researching BC's life, or life on Ynys Enlli.

[Mumzie]

http://theislandreview.com/content/th...

[Felicity · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chamberlain addresses the putative reader of this poetic account of her twelve years' residence on the North Wales island of Bardsey thus: 'You who are in the traffic of the world: can you guess the thoughts of an islander?' Living in splendid rural isolation, inaccessible by road, I am not exactly in the traffic of the world but neither am I entirely out of it on this considerably larger island of Ireland. I cannot claim any privileged knowledge or understanding of island mentality, but I can guess the thoughts of my nearest neighbours were I to antagonise them by committing their private lives to print. It's harder to understand why Chamberlain did not anticipate the outraged response she subsequently received from the community that had not merely tolerated the presence of the mainland visitor but generously enabled her to live among them, sharing their knowledge, skills, goods and facilities. As a gifted poet and artist Chamberlain displays astonishing insensitivity to their feelings. She was not the first or last 'blow in' to make herself unwelcome on her adopted island, alienated and evicted by those who felt themselves traduced by her account. Despite these reservations, and because I am not an islander, I was captivated by her descriptions and her instinct for self-sabotage and, sadly, self-destruction, and am even now working my way through all her published works.

[Michael Harvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brenda Chamberlain was an Welsh visual artist from near Bangor and was part of the trailblazing tribe of post-war artists who put their art at the centre of their lives. This book is a selection of her memories from the time she spent living on the island of Enlli (Bardsey in English) which lies just off the LLŷn Peninsula on the North West coast of Wales.

I have visited the island and stayed for a few nights. Even now, visitors have to be prepared to pump their own water, do without flushing toilets and survive without electricity. There are some solar lights in the buildings but the light they give is only enough to orientate yourself in the room and not enough to, say, read a book or cook. Enlli brings you up against the reality of the world as it actually is and some simple but brutal facts - like, when the sun goes down it gets dark. Really dark.

My weekend on the island has a huge impact on me, imagine how it was for Brenda Chamberlain who lived there from 1947 t0 1961! Life on the island was intense. The weather could be brutal and unforgiving and when the sea got rough they would not be able to get off the island in order to get supplies from the mainland. The longest that Brenda and Paul, her French partner, were stranded was five weeks - in January! Island politics could be difficult too. There were bullying campaigns against members of the community, infant deaths, shortages of food and supplies, family feuds and parental neglect.

On the other hand it is clear that, in spite of the hardships and challenges, Brenda Chamberlain felt more alive there than at other times of her life. The island is beautiful in Spring and summer and it is full of wildlife, including migratory seabirds, choughs, little owls and a large seal colony.

It is the sea that dominates this book. The author writes about it on almost every page. The way it changes from day to day; how it looks at night when the moon shines; the endless weaving of the tides around the island in complex and dangerous eddies and her realisation that the sea is not just its surface. Island people have to learn to read what the sea is doing under the surface where a whole network of undercurrents weave and join. Misreading the signs can mean your boat could capsize or be hurled onto the rocks.

The book is full of Brenda's drawings that help bring the place to life. Although she was painting while she lived on the island she never mentions her work. This book is all about Enlli, its people, its struggle and the stormy life and lives that it contains.

[Phil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well that was disappointing! After all the positive reviews, I expected to enjoy this book, but I found it hard to see past the author's breath-taking sense of entitlement and her arrogant and patronising attitude toward the islanders.

On first arriving, she and an Englishman she has befriended criticise one of the (extremely poor) locals for collecting gulls' eggs to eat, saying that he shouldn't be taking them from a 'bird sanctuary'. With staggering hypocrisy, they then collect gulls' eggs themselves because they want an omelette! Her behaviour towards the Englishman is quite flirtatious, so I wasn't really surprised when he tells her that his wife has become so jealous that she is threatening to leave if he has anything further to do with Chamberlain. Chamberlain then states that "it was necessary to forgive and be forgiven", so she pays a night-time visit to the couple - with predictably dramatic results. She constantly comes across as someone who will only ever consider herself and her own wishes, so it's really hard to warm to her or to sympathise with any difficulties she experiences.

She opens her book by saying "You who are in the traffic of the world: Can you guess the thoughts of an islander?", the implication being that she can. But I do wonder what the islanders (to whom she dedicates the book) thought of the horrible way she portrays them!

I also found the way she drifts from reality to fantasy and back again quite exhausting to follow. She'll start off telling an anecdote about a seal or an islander, and before you know it, the seal is turning into a woman or the islander is turning into a seal...She also has a really weird obsession with seals being sexually attracted to female humans.

Two stars for some of the writing - when she ditches the mythology and stops acting as if she is on a higher plane than anyone else on the island, her writing is beautiful - poetic and precise. It's just a shame that it doesn't happen very often.

[Danielle Crowley · Rating 3 out of 5]

The description of Brendas life on Bardsey was interesting and poetically written. Her description of the characters and scenery on the island was beautifully.

[Roger Morgan-Grenville · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hard island life told beautifully by a poet.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charming, impressionistic autobiographical (but not chronological) scenes from the writer-artist Brenda Chamberlain's 13-year stay on Bardsey Island, illustrated with her own line drawings and with a few interpolated poems and fables. Her accounts of the journeys by sea from Aberdaron to reach the island in what sounds like an unseaworthy boat are unnerving (the tide-race of the title being a force to respect), and the life on the island sounds as if it must have been hard from a practical point of view although she does not really make it sound so. The book is dedicated to the islanders, but apparently they were not pleased by her portrayal of them. She describes the island with an artist's eye (sweeps of colours, impressions of the weather rather than detailed descriptions). One for anyone who likes islands or hankers even a little for island life (this book might just possibly cure you of that).