The west of Scotland is the setting for an astonishing study of the microcosm and the cosmic

The Sea is not Made of Water: Life Between the Tides
Adam Nicolson
(WILLIAM COLLINS, 384 PP, £20)
Tablet bookshop price £18 • tel 020 7799 4064

Between the margins of sea and land; between the tides, where unbaptised babies were buried in more superstitious times and where Darwin formed his theory of evolution, lies a world teeming with life in an ever-varying and fragile pattern of cyclical survival. This is the world of Adam Nicolson’s extraordinary new book, The Sea is Not Made of Water. And while, in these pandemic times, it might be tempting to say that this intertidal world is a microcosm or metaphor for struggle, community and recovery, it proves to be much more than that. In fact, as this world unfolds through the lens of this remarkable writer, it becomes clear that it does nothing less than show us what we are, if we have the patience to look long and deep, and to see, think and understand. “The human, the planetary and the animal all interact, and all of them are inter-leaved in the realities of the shore. None makes sense without the other.”