Book review: The Place of Tides by James Rebanks (Penguin, £10.99)

What is it about books set by the sea that always grab my attention? It was clearly my theme for last year’s reading. The non-fiction title I chose to take me from the cusp of 2025 into 2026 was The Place of Tides by James Rebanks. It was recommended by a friend, and I wasn’t disappointed. Rebanks’s debut non-fiction book, The Shepherd’s Life, became a bestseller, and The Place of Tides was shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2025. The book takes us on a journey to a remote Norwegian island, part of an archipelago stretching far into the Norwegian Sea, and it chronicles James Rebanks’s springtime retreat with a traditional ‘duck woman’, Anna, whose task it is to collect the precious eider down from the wild eider ducks that nest on the island. Part geography, part social history, part memoir, part poetic muse, the book transports us to a simpler existence where time slows and the weather dominates. As Rebanks patiently waits alongside Anna for the ducks to lay their precious eggs, he discovers plenty about himself, and how he views the world, and we - as readers - discover so much more about the painstaking, traditional, and loving, way in which the duck women look out for the ducks, in a tradition that stretches back centuries. It’s a stunning and thoughtful read, one I highly recommend. As the world changes around us, faster than ever, it captures a moment in time, and a moment in nature, that may soon completely disappear.

The Place of Tides by James Rebanks (Penguin, £10.99)