Of The Sea Author Wyl Menmuir explores the human pull towards the coast
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ince the earliest stages of human development, the sea has fascinated and entranced us, sustained communities and provided livelihoods. It fires our imagination, brings us joy and solace - but also wields immense destructive power. It offers the promise of faraway lands, but also shapes our borders and erodes the very ground beneath our feet. Booker Prize nominated author Wyl Menmuir makes his first foray into non-fiction with The Draw of the Sea, in which he meets those who spend their lives by the water – fishermen and free divers, sailors and surfers, artists and environmentalists, those who have turned to it for health reasons – and attempts to define the role the sea plays in our lives. “It does so much for us: it’s work, it’s play, it feeds us and heals us,” he says. Wyl had already made his reputation with novels – his 2016 debut was longlisted for the Booker Prize, no less. The Many is a mystery set in an isolated coastal village, and it was on festival circuit that Wyl had the idea for a non-fiction work about how humankind relates to the sea. “People would want to know where The Many was set, and many recognised it as their own village,” he recalls. “One elderly gentleman in Piccadilly swore blind it was his home in west Wales, and begged me: ‘Please don’t tell me it isn’t my village.’ Above all, people wanted to share their feelings about the sea.” As a former journalist, Wyl was no stranger to non-fiction. He had also interviewed n 28 |
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different path to the sea, and in this book I wanted to trace those lines.” Wyl himself grew up in landlocked Stockport, where the only water was “the brown waters of the River Mersey, which passed under Asda”. Therein lies the appeal: “Inland, everything is parcelled up in some way. There are so many places you can’t go. When we went on holiday to the seaside, it felt like unregulated space.” Having started his own family, he moved down to Cornwall to be nearer his wife’s Clay Country residents for Kneehigh’s Walk With Me story-telling app. “Fiction and non-fiction are not so different, in that they are simply alternative ways of telling stories,” he says. In 13 interlinked chapters, Wyl sets out to investigate what it is that draws us to the water’s edge. He starts with Jane Darke, widow of filmmaker Nick and an experienced beachcomber; and ends with rake artist Tony Plant, known for his expansive and intricate work on sand. In between, he searches Scillonian beaches for tiny shells, swims with freediving photographer Daan Verhoeven, handplanes surf boards in Porthtowan and even runs away to sea on a tall ship bound for the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. In that sense, the book sounds like the perfect excuse to sample lots of different activities, especially for someone who clearly loves being in the water. “It was so much fun,” Wyl enthuses. “That’s the privilege of being a writer. We all take a
Issue 73 | August - September 2022
parents, and is a lecturer in creative writing at Falmouth University and co-creator of The Writers’ Block, working with children, adults, schools, communities and more. “Even though I’m a northerner, Cornwall feels like home now.” At the bottom of it all is a serious message. “We want to use the sea as our playground, our fishing grounds, but we’re not so good at looking after it and protecting it. We need to get better at that, and pass the experience onto our children, and their children. “This isn’t a book of hard campaigning, but the idea behind it is to get people to explore the way in which we love the sea, and from that work out ways in which they can protect the thing they love.” l The
Draw
of
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Sea is published by Aurum, RRP £12.99 (hardback).
