Strandings

A wild and wonderful whale chase, of cetaceans real and surreal and imagined, Peter Riley's beautifully written book adopts the sceptical/obsessive tone of a modern Melville (or perhaps that should be Captain Ahab) as he roams Britain from east to west, north to south, in search of usually dead and often rotting whales and the stories they leave in their wake. There's no box of dusty bones he won't stick his nose in, no dubious character on a beach he won't shake down for stolen whale teeth. Indeed, Riley's so interwoven with his subject that I doubt anyone will ever match Strandings for its sheer bravura, its wry insight, and its absolute, engulfing, and brilliantly enlivening whaleheadedness -- Philip Hoare, author * Leviathan and Albert and the Whale * With wit and a whale-lover's passion, Riley explores the cultural and emotional bonds that form between humans and our sea-dwelling, mammalian cousins - both alive and dead. Strandings is at once incisive and funny, personal and historical, gripping and moving -- Merlin Sheldrake, author * Entangled Life * Erudite, funny and sad - a glorious rollercoaster of a book whose twists and turns take us again and again to the dissolving edges between reality and mirage -- Jean Sprackland, author * These Silent Mansions * A marvellous read. Subversive, jaunty, poignant, deadly serious and relentlessly entertaining -- Charles Foster, author * Being a Human and Being a Beast * A tremendously enjoyable book, a gleefully peculiar mixture of grief and gore populated by a shadowy cast of oddballs, the only certainty the dead whales at its heart -- Jessie Greengrass, author * The High House * Reading Strandings is to be caught in a magical drift, borne ever deeper, into the atavistic, into the animal selves, still alive, inside us. I was captivated -- David Keenan, author * This Is Memorial Device * A funny, personal and poetic dive into the mystical world of whale strandings. A compelling and fascinating read -- Will Sharpe, creator of C4's * Flowers * I devoured this - it's wonderful ... As compellingly eccentric as it is deeply humane, emotionally and politically astute. One test of a memoir is that you actually want to spend time with the narrator, and Riley is so charming, outward looking and rigorously honest it's impossible to consider anyone not. Strandings is a funny and poignant exploration of a fringe I didn't know existed, but written with such engaging personality and prose style I feel as though I've met the cast myself -- Luke Kennard, poet and author * The Transition * An authentic and troubling adventure for these dark times. Here is the taste, smell, and rush of a committed documentary-novelist unpicking the mysteries of his life and the great world in which he swims. A brave, reckless and engaging performance -- Iain Sinclair, author * The Gold Machine *