Secrets of the Sea

Dec 17, 2025 5:55 AM

Author:Nicholas Shakespeare

Secrets of the Sea

Following the death of his parents in a car crash, eleven-year-old Alex Dove is torn from his life on a remote farm in Tasmania and sent to school in England. When he returns to Australia twelve years later, the timeless beauty of the land and his encounter with a young woman whose own life has been marked by tragedy, persuade him to stay. They marry, and he finds himself drawn into the eccentric, often hilarious dynamics of island life.

Longing for children, the couple open their home to a disquieting guest, a teenage castaway, whose presence in their home begins to unravel their tenuously forged happiness.

Reviews

Carefully measured storytelling in this enveloping tale of life's small treasures lost and found

—— Sunday Times

Beautifully done. It reads absolutely true

—— Scotsman

An impressive, workmanlike, poignant piece of work: the barren husband and wife in the foreground; a wealth of vividly drawn minor characters behind them; and, framing the whole picture, the great brooding sea, giver and taker of life.

—— Sunday Telegraph

Masterful...a work of rare beauty

—— Financial Times

A richly evocative tale

—— Daily Mail

Subtle but arresting...an exhiliarating saga

—— The Times

Scary, funny and loaded with the kind of unforgettable characters that make all writers want to try harder

—— Eoin Colfer , The Week

A fine meditation on love and loss

—— Sally Cousins , Sunday Telegraph

Mankell carefully maps the changing seasons in beautifully stark prose

—— James Urquhart , Financial Times

The cool, enigmatic tone is reminiscent of Paul Auster

—— Brandon Borshaw , Independent on Sunday

Vivid prose...translated beautifully

—— Ian Thompson , Evening Standard

Present a spare tale of metaphors and symbols to argue that, in the middle of life, we are in death but occasionally, and happily, the opposite too

—— Tim Pashley , Times Literary Supplement

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