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Coasting

Name: Coasting
Author: Jonathan Raban
ISBN: 9780671454807

by Jonathan Raban

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Overview

Put Jonathan Raban on a boat and the results will be fascinating, and never more so than when he’s sailing around the serpentine, 2,000-mile coast of his native England. In this acutely perceived and beautifully written book, the bestselling author of Bad Land turns that voyage–which coincided with the Falklands war of 1982-into an occasion for meditations on his country, his childhood, and the elusive notion of home.

Whether he’s chatting with bored tax exiles on the Isle of Man, wrestling down a mainsail during a titanic gale, or crashing a Scottish house party where the kilted guests turn out to be Americans, Raban is alert to the slightest nuance of meaning. One can read Coasting for his precise naturalistic descriptions or his mordant comments on the new England, where the principal industry seems to be the marketing of Englishness. But one always reads it with pleasure.

About the Author, Jonathan Raban

Jonathan Raban is the author of Soft City, Arabia, Foreign Land, Old Glory, For Love and Money, Hunting Mister Heartbreak, Bad Land, and Passage to Juneau; he has also edited The Oxford Book of the Sea. Raban has received the National Book Critics Circle Award (for Bad Land), the Heinemann Award for Literature, the Thomas Cook Award, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, the Governor’s Award of the State of Washington, and the PEN West Creative Nonfiction Award, among others. Raban lives in Seattle, with his daughter.

Biography

Jonathan Raban is the author of the novels Surveillance and Waxwings; his nonfiction includes Passage to Juneau and Bad Land. He is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Heinemann Award of the Royal Society of Literature, the PEN/West Creative Nonfiction Award, and the Governor's Award of the State of Washington.

He was born in England and has lived in Seattle, Washington, since 1990.

Author biography courtesy of Random House, Inc.

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Editorials

Library Journal

s introspective account of his solo circumnavigation of the British Isles in a 30-foot ketch is a seagoing walkabout, somewhat reminiscent of Paul Theroux's The Kingdom by the Sea: a journey around Great Britain (LJ 10/15/83) . It is a personal journey, an effort to come to terms with his native England and his perception of what it is, or should be, and his place in it. The book is also an attempt to understand his relationshippast and presentwith his father. We see the events leading up to the Falklands episode set against the memories of his growing up. We visit the coast of England as he describes his various ports-of-call, the people he encounters, and his experiences in port and at sea. An interesting book for public libraries. Susan Ebershoff-Coles, Indianapolis-Marion Cty. P.L.