I wanted to come into a new year reading James Rebanks’s latest book The Place of Tides because this feels like an important year both for my own personal journey and the planet. We crossed into 2025 with yet another storm, not a named one granted, but still some pretty sharp winds and a multitude of flood warnings. Even as I write now roads are closed in my town due to more flooding.

We can be in no doubt that we have fundamentally changed the climate of the Earth through industrialised, consumer lifestyles and that changes to the way we live are also coming, whether we like them or not. Exactly what this will look like and over what timeframe the change will come we cannot say, but I believe we will do well to look for wisdom on the edges of our civilisation, because that is where I think we are heading.

The Place of Tides is the story of a season James spent tending to eider ducks off the coast of Norway on the Vega archipelago with Anna and Ingrid. Anna’s heritage is from these islands and although she lived a recognisable “civilised” life as a mother holding down a regular job for many years, the last 30 wilder years have been devoted to reinvigorating a lost way of life. It is a life of passion for a place and a creature, and a story that offers inspiration and hope.

For long periods nothing happens, there is just watching and waiting, and then when action comes it is to nurture and protect the life that eventually flocks to the small islands to procreate. Even there sit lessons for all of us, teaching us to observe, to consciously move into the natural flows of life and to then humbly join in with the work that is going on. Time and again “nature” tells us that we need to set aside hubris and ego, but time and again we fail to listen.

To drive home the point, industrial pollution still threatens to overwhelm even these remote landscapes as James describes plastic waste sweeping onto the shorelines. Even if we discovered a limitless, free and clean energy source our instinct for greed would overwhelm the world. As Marilynne Robinson beautifully summarises in her essay Freedom of Thought: "Christian theology has spoken of human limitation, fallenness, an individually and collectively disastrous bias toward error. I think we all know that the earth might be reaching the end of its tolerance for our presumptions."

The strongest takeaway from Anna’s story for me was the importance and meaningfulness of a small passion in a small place. Anna’s connection to the ducks, to the islands and to the people who make their lives there, alongside her setting aside of personal ego, are where I believe we will find human hope and salvation. In our modern Western culture we have made idols of ourselves, seeking to make the world revolve around our short lives; seeing it all, doing it all, consuming it all, rather than finding our appropriate space to join the creation.

I had a feeling that this book would be a good place to start my year, a way to divine a path for what is to come, and that is exactly what it has proved to be. As the eider season unfolds it shapes things to be let go and things to be nurtured. I hope to spend 2025 living more consciously into a way of life that connects me to people and place, that shrinks my need to be seen and allows me to walk gently, humbly and curiously through this uncertain, precarious and deeply mysterious life.

This is the second book I've read by this author and I am again in awe of his beautiful writing that evokes the setting of this charming book. A delight for the senses.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Anna lives on the Norwegian coast and since she was fifty, she has spent every spring and early summer caring for eider ducks on a rocky island, reviving the tradition of the eider wives and reconnecting with both nature and her family's past. James Rebanks meets her on a journalist's junket one year and as time passes and he becomes more hopeless about what he's trying to do with his own land, he thinks of Anna more and more until he decides to go and spend a season with her, understanding her work and hoping to be inspired.

What I liked best about this book is that he is inspired, but not in the ways he imagines. This is an object lesson in understanding that what we think we need is not always what we actually need and sometimes e we need to be gently schooled by two old women who quietly get on with making the best of things.

It is a very simple, but beautifully told book about a time when he was feeling a bit lost and seeking some solitude. He reached out to Anna, a 70 year old Norwegian woman he had met some years earlier. Anna was one of the last remaining duck women; these were the Women that would go out to the remote islands where the eider ducks came to breed. They would build nests, look after the ducks, and when they left at the end of the season, they would collect their feathers, which were a very valuable commodity. In times past, people could get rich from the feathers, but the ducks have been struggling for years. Already in decline, WW2 was disastrous for them; the were used to people, so when the German soldiers arrived they were easy targets, (not going there). The population was decimated to feed the German army. Later, mini were introduced to the islands so that the islanders could make some extra money from their fur, but the escaped; it seems that was just as bad for the eider ducks as it has been back here for the water vole.

From the time I first heard about it, I thought this was a strange choice of topic of Rebanks, and, as expected, I found it was the stuff of a long-read magazine article rather than a whole book. In brief, he travels to a polar island of Norway to be apprenticed to an older woman who has long looked after the resident eider colony, making them nests. It is a mutualistic arrangement in that she harvests the down feathers they leave behind.

Rebanks depicts himself as undergoing a (midlife) crisis of purpose and attitude. Being in nature, doing one’s duty, and adapting to change are the lessons he absorbs, and spells out for readers. His writing is as strong as always, but I kept wishing for more story, more of a so-what.

I like James Rebanks writing. It always beautifully describes situations to an extent that you can close your eyes, see & smell the scenes.

Some might find this style boring, but I don't regard this book as something I'd read from cover to cover. I've been reading it alongside other page-turning type books. So picking this book up and learning about ducks and remote Norwegian island life is like wrapping up in a warm blanket with a cup of hot chocolate in front of a fire. It's comfort food for the brain at it's best.

I like James Rebanks writing. It always beautifully describes situations to an extent that you can close your eyes, see & smell the scenes.

Some might find this style boring, but I don't regard this book as something I'd read from cover to cover. I've been reading it alongside other page-turning type books. So picking this book up and learning about ducks and remote Norwegian island life is like wrapping up in a warm blanket with a cup of hot chocolate in front of a fire. It's comfort food for the brain at it's best.

I have never read anything by James Rebanks before and the blurb suggested The Place of Tides is not my usual genre but it sounded so interesting I thought I'd give it a go. I was really pleasantly surprised, the book is beautifully written. It's captivating and full of wisdom and it pulled me right in. It's an enchanting tale and I found it a very relaxing read. I totally recommend this book.

This was my first time reading a book by this author and although this isn’t my normal genre, I was intrigued by the book description. I’m afraid it’s proved to me that I should stick to my normal choices as although this book was beautifully written, I struggled to stay connected with it. I can imagine it took a lot of research and I did enjoy “learning” about the local traditions.

First time reading James Rebanks. The synopsis really appealed to me but I found it quite a slog. Not quite the genre I usually read and I wanted to widen my reading experience. The natural world as described and written were well researched and evoking but otherwise a book that didn’t really grip.

Thank you NetGalley and the Publishers, Penguin Press for this ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley for a free ebook copy of The Place of Tides. What a different, inspiring and incredible story about a man who spends a season on an island in the Norwegian archipelago with two amazing women who are dedicated in preserving an age old tradition of encouraging the nesting of wild eider ducks in order to harvest their feathers and down.

So many wise words in this book where the reader learns from the fabulous characters as well as the birds themselves.

“The water never looked the same twice, like someone was constantly changing the filters on a photograph.”

“geese take turns at the front when they migrate, because the front bird is working the hardest, and the others ride in its slipstream. So, rather sensibly, they drop back after a while, to catch their breath, and are pulled along while they recover. Men are not so wise.”

“the first rule of living is to live. To see, hear, smell, touch, and taste the world.”

“The males had evolved to be seen, to fuss, squabble, and fight. …The female ducks evolved to be unseen.”

“There was the sense of an ending, but this show wasn’t quite over. When we left, the work wouldn’t be completely done.”

“We cannot be what we are and what we aspire to be at the same time, something in us has to die for something else to be born.”

“A story is rarely as simple as it seems.  We are all a bundle of virtues and vices, strengths and flaws, hopes and fears.”

“a good life was about forgiveness  –  accepting others’ flaws as we hope they might in turn forgive ours.”

“if we are to save the world, we have to start somewhere. We just have to do one damn thing after another.

What a privilege to have ‘met’ Anna through this book. Thank you so much for this book.

I was really intrigued by the blurb for The Place of Tides, this was a tradition I’d never heard of let alone knew anything about and it was fascinating to learn about it.

This was a very inspiring, moving and thought-provoking story about friendship and the importance of preserving tradition and protecting & embracing communities.

The characters and setting were simply gorgeous and wonderfully descriptive.

A beautiful unique & inspiring story.

I hadn’t read any James Rebanks before and although the story here is interesting I didn’t find the telling of it particularly satisfying. The nature writing aspect of it was well done though. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I love a soft eiderdown, now I know why.
I was drawn to this book by the cover and the promise of living on an uninhabited island for 10 weeks.
James meets Anna when he is working in a remote area of Norway, he is drawn to her strength and drive. Years later when James is married with four children he feels disturbed and as though something is missing from his life. He contacts Anna and asks if he can accompany her on her annual trip to gather Eider from a remote island. When he arrives he sees that Anna has aged considerably and seems ill, he accompanies her and her friend Ingrid to a small small island in the Vega Archipelago, they are taken out on a motor boat and James senses the women's disregard for the men on the boat.
The men visit them on the island for a meal and get drunk, this leads them to tell many stories of the German occupation and the length that people went to in the resistance, the Germans also ate the ducks which reduced the duck population. Mink were introduced to the islands and some escaped, they also ate the ducks.
When the three reach the island they have a lot to unpack and to make the house comfortable. the food that they eat sounds delicious as they need a lot of stamina for the work. Anna is at first very tired and has to leave the job of locating and salvaging the nests to Ingrid and James, Ingrid is a perfectionist as she wants to please Anna, eventually Anna is well enough to help them with repairing nests and making new ones, they have to be carefully places out of the way of predators.
James portrayal of the changing scenery, the roughness and beauty of the landscape are very moving.
The ducks begin to return to the island and the three are busy counting the eggs, protecting the ducks and surviving.
The chicks begin to hatch and make their way to the sea, there are some hazardous journeys and some amusing stories. Anna and Ingrid teach James to collect the down, what a painstaking job this is, teasing out bits of wood etc until just the down is left, then further cleaning. the down that they collect is enough to make one eiderdown.
They return to the mainland and after the initial strangeness, James meets Anna's family, he realises that he had judged her two husbands harshly in his haste to protect Anna.
James has insights into his own life and treatment of his family and is more contented, he is ready to return to his own farm.
Thank you James, Netgalley and Penguin for this delightful and unusual book.

Gentle, inspiring and thought-provoking quasi biography.

Feeling lost and looking for time away from constant worrying, James Rebanks, a farmer in Cumbria, finds himself reaching out to Anna, a 70 year old Norwegian who spends the spring on a remote island on the edge of the Arctic, caring for the wild eider ducks and collecting their down.

She is carrying on an ancient tradition that has been looked down upon and has been close to dwindling away.

James works alongside Anna and her companion Ingrid, cleaning and repairing the nesting areas and trying to protect the birds from a range of predators.

He initially thinks that Anna, like himself, is going to the island to seek solitude, but learns a number of lessons, including the power of forgiveness.

A romantic story of friendship, The Place of Tides is a powerful lesson in self-knowledge and forgiveness. James Rebanks in his fascination comes to understand a deeper meaning of purpose and life through the lens of women on a remote Norwegian Island. If we need lights to follow this is the one. As he witnesses Anna's last season on the island, James experiences genuine and authentic friendship and the power of redemption. Far from being a season of escape, this is an expression of rebirth. His understanding of Anna and her world is far from what the previously thought. And in the space of rediscovery lies healing.

Such a simple yet inspiring story about a tradition I had never known existed. Really drove home the importance of preserving tradition and how important it can be to a family and community. Rebanks achieved the balance of depicting the brutal yet beautiful landscape really well. A really unique and heart-warming read.

I have read al of this authors' books. The previous one have been about farming in the Lake District.
This book is very different and you find yourself questioning how or why anyone would write about a duck lady"s life on a remote Norwegian island. As the story unfolds you get an inside view of an almost forgotten life of tradition and heritage. It is well written and descriptive. There are a ew parallels between the author's life and the one of the lady who he is writing about.
Wonderful characters emerge and lessons for life from another culture. The author had a few personal issues he is able to address from his experience on this voyage of discovery. A very different and well-crafted piece of work.
Very unusual and enjoyable.

Seven years after first meeting Anna, James Rebanks leaves behind his Cumbrian farm and returns to the remote Norwegian island where Anna, now elderly, protects the Eider Ducks who return to the island each year and from which the precious eiderdown is collected. Spending springtime on the island known as The Place of Tides will test the resilience of James, Anna and her companion, Ingrid but together they learn to form a community and coexist amicably together.

With such a fascinating wealth of stories, Anna recounts the history of the rocky islands of this isolated Norwegian archipelago which lie on the edge of the Arctic circle. Recounting tales about the harshness of survival, and complete with the same degree of stubbornness which allowed her ancestors to survive, Anna, keeps the old ways alive, maintaining harsh traditions which are as fragile as the ecology to which the islands still cling. From the surge of the tides, to the swooping majesty of seabirds in flight, the beauty and harshness of the natural world unfolds, a world which is increasingly under threat. The arrival of the ducks to the island, to nest and rear their young, is when the work begins in earnest and keeping them safe from predators and allowing natural order to be maintained takes time, skill and effort.

Poetic, lyrical and beautifully quiet in places, this is not a book to be rushed, or squandered, but rather find the time to sit and allow the ebb and flow of the tides to set its own momentum just as Anna’s forgotten way of life allows her life story and that of the Eider ducks to be heard at their own distinct pace.

The Place of Tides is the type of book I have come to rely on as proof of goodness in the world. It exemplifies a love and appreciation of nature and the efforts of a dedicated group to rediscover the delicate balance that used to exist. Here, James Rebanks joins Anna, a duck woman, and Ingrid, her protege, on a remote Norwegian island as they prepare nests and safeguard the island for wild eider ducks. The work is hard, the weather unforgiving, but the goal is to create a protected nursery for eider ducks to raise their brood and return to sea leaving eider down behind for collection. As green a pursuit as is possible.

This is a gorgeous book. Full of history, natural observations and a sense of purpose well worth pursuing. Anna's story is incredible as is her knowledge of the wild world put into practice on the island. Not only is this novel rich in wildlife but in finding joy in a simpler existence and a better understanding of human nature driven to exhaustion by the modern pace. I am in awe of the natural world and find much joy in this wonderful adventure. I am pleased to know I am not alone in wanting to appreciate and preserve old ways of caring for the wild world. So rewarding is this task, I would happily go and do this work for a season. Thank you, James, for sharing this story and opening our eyes to this difficult but rewarding way of life.