A review by subtemple
The Stone Tide: Adventures at the End of the World by Gareth E. Rees

5.0

Superficially this is a book about trying to write a book that wants to be an occult history of Hastings but by turns becomes a raw account of living and loss, ambitions and failures, illness and limits. No genre goes unspliced in the telling, yet all the strands meet at the heart of a web of, at first, unfocussed ideas and contingent obsessions. I found this a brave, inventive and profoundly moving book, new English landscape writing at its most expansive and necessary. Gareth E Rees is a post-punk Sebald, like Will Ashon, like Gary Budden, and well worth watching out for.