This lovely tone poem of a book details the ten weeks James Rebanks lived on a small island off the coast of Norway near the Arctic Circle. In The Place of Tides, he writes about the eider ducks who nest on the island and the woman who made that happen.
A century ago, collecting the down left behind by the ducks was part of a self-sufficient lifestyle. People on the small outer islands fished teeming waters, ate eggs from massive flocks of birds, and sold the eider down. Now, the natural habitat is so changed that the ducks need assistance to survive.
Anna had lived the expected life; she married, had children, worked at a job in town that she enjoyed. But she had heard about the independent women who lived on the outer islands caring for the ducks and had been taken there to visit by her father who also loved that lifestyle. When she was fifty, she answered an advertisement for a duck woman on one of the islands.
Each spring, during nesting, she lived on the island, building safe nest boxes and protecting the birds from predators. She became an expert; she saw her duck numbers increase, and eventually brought the eiders back to an island they had abandoned. Recognition came from UNESCO, making this area a World Heritage Site. Twenty years later when Rebanks joined her, it was Anna’s last season with the ducks.
The pace of this memoir echoes the pace of life on the islands. Both are slow, deliberate, observant. Rebanks notes the small changes as spring progresses, the bite of the wind, the swelling of peony buds. We learn about their meals of fish, potatoes, and pancakes and how the three duck people pass the time on a rainy day. There is the art of making a nest acceptable to a picky duck mother and a tremendous amount of hard physical work.
Is it worth it? If the ducks are unable to survive on their own, should humans devote a large amount of time and resources to helping them (and by extension other endangered animals)? After a whole season of work by three people, there was enough eider to make two duvets.
If the payoff isn’t monetary, or usefulness to humans, what then? What is intimacy with something wild worth?
I heard strange woodwind noises coming from under the floorboards. Anna held up a hand like we should not move an inch. A duck was chattering to herself eighteen inches beneath the sofa, perhaps to her mate outside in the grass, as she decided on a nesting place in the shadows beneath the house.
How could we give them up, these wild birds living the lives they’ve lived for millennia? Isn’t there room for wildness in a 21st century world? Where do we envision wilderness 200 years from now? These are the looming questions behind this quiet beautiful story.
When there is an artist whose work we love, we assume the producer is a wise and great person. An actress who gives a moving performance must be empathetic; a writer who produces a perceptive book must be compassionate. Well, prepare to disabuse yourself of these ideas when you read The Award by Mathew Pearl.
The top writers of the day, artists whose work we admire, who have won the big prizes, are as callow, jealous, and ambitious as can be. They would do anything, anything, to be published, receive an award, be admitted to the “club.” Such is the main character and many of the people he meets.
David is a gifted writer desperate to be published and acknowledged. When he moves into a house and learns that the other tenant is a big-name successful writer whom he idolizes, he makes the mistake anyone would and assumes this is the break he has been waiting for. He is wrong and his idol is detestable. But David is no better. As he fights tooth and claw to get ahead, we see his career succeed, while his integrity disappears.
This is a wonderfully plotted story with an unnerving depiction of the need for success. I understand that a person and his product are two different things. I drive a Tesla, after all. But getting to know the main character and watching his ascent/descent was just too painful.
When Louise Penny wrote The Black Wolf in 2024, she worried that the plot concerning an invasion of Canada by the US was too unrealistic. Then came Trump.
Her previous novel, The Grey Wolf, which is actually the first half of a two-book whole, ends with the realization that the plot Chief Inspector Gamache and his staff had uncovered was only the first step. There was still a problem. But what else was going to happen? They weren’t looking for the perpetrators of a crime – not yet – but trying to prevent something unknown. Whatever it was involved government officials, in both the US and Canada, at the highest level.
What develops is a sophisticated plot concerned with water supplies, mega forest fires, and global warming, all intertwined with power and greed. Gamache matches wits with the black wolf to stop political chaos.
Three Pines, that mythical village of safety and home, plays a smaller part in this novel than others. This might be all right. There are only so many allusions to fresh hot brioche and seared Arctic char that a person can read.
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I loved your description of Place of Tides and of Anna’s story as a duck woman. You raise an interesting question about conservation. In my humble opinion, that question requires us to thoroughly understand how the benefit of natural resources supports our human lives. We often don’t realize just how much landscapes, resources and animals have an effect on environment until after they are gone or endangered.
Definitely a complex issue