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Top of the pile
92
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
83/100Critics
96/100Scholars
98/100Author:
Roger Deakin, Bonnie Tsui
Publisher:
Tin House Books
Date:
May 25, 2021
First published in 1999 in Great Britain, this volume about the author's months-long adventure swimming his way across England is credited with the advent of the international wild swimming movement.
What The Reviewers Say
As Deakin sets off, his reader begins to understand how he sees the natural world. Tiny shells are the souls of drowned sailors; every single flower is named. He follows the flight of a bee or dragonfly so that we share its quotidian errands. He considers the eels he swims with. Really considers them.
He maps Britain through its capillary network of streams and rivers ...The book is also an account of those he meets along the way, from the unfriendly school officials who despatch him, dripping, from the river Itchen at Winchester College, to an extraordinary vignette of a fenland eel-man.
What I first loved about his writing on swimming was the otherworldliness he so keenly discerned. In Waterlog, the bewitching, Alice In Wonderland quality comes through.
This newly released edition...will introduce Deakin’s masterpiece to a new wave of readers, who will find themselves transported to the rugged British countryside, as the author attempts to swim his way around Britain. His captivating chronicle of that experience offers a sumptuous blend of travel guide and personal memoir.
