"Rebanks’s telling of the skilled work and cultural history that he learns from Anna Måsøy is all this otherwise enlightening book needs.’" - Observer
"Rebanks is an extraordinary writer, and The Place of Tides will linger in the mind for a long time." - Sunday Telegraph
“In these 285 thoughtful, beautifully written pages, James Rebanks shows, better than anything I’ve read recently, the precise quality of the catastrophe befalling the natural world and also what we might begin to do about it. Humane, beautifully paced, gentle, and strangely compelling, The Place of Tides feels like, not only a modern classic, but one we very much need right now." - George Saunders
“A beautiful book about the lives we think we’re going to lead versus the lives we actually live.”
- Paula Hawkins
“The Place of Tides is a magical book, at once a lament for a world in danger of disappearing, and a celebration of an indomitable spirit determined to preserve it. James Rebanks has written a quiet yet ringing masterpiece.” - John Banville
“A magnificent book – wonderfully unlike any other . . . The Place of Tides is big-hearted and transporting, a quietly gripping reckoning with self-sufficiency and interdependence, with the lives that make us and the lives that we make.” - Philip Gourevitch
"This is utterly engaging story telling. The drama, the change, the mystery, the unknown; the details of nature, the moods, the hope and despair; the memories, reflections and learning that emerge out of long lives lived fully: The Place of Tides tells a beautiful story that is profound and moving." - Jane Clarke
"A vivid portrayal of the fascinating world of the duck women of Norway's Helgeland islands." - Tim Pears
"I've loved everything about the writing, the characters, the kindness, the landscape, the gentle revelations. It's beautiful — a really beautiful and necessary book for these difficult, broken times." - Sophy Roberts
"A tender account ... the greatest joy of this book lies in the descriptions of the northern seascape — the colours, the Arctic light, the wild things ... wilderness and unknowable places return us to the curiosity of childhood. Our humanity is restored." - Tablet
"As in his previous books, his prose is simple and clear, his depictions of nature gorgeous ... This book, and Anna's life are inspiring in their simplicity, fortitude and elegance." - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"This tender, contemplative book ... The Place of Tides washes over readers gently, refreshing us with its moving portrait of a quietly purposeful way of life." - Christian Science Monitor
"A very beautiful book. A chiselled restraint, a Norse toughness, sharp humour, painful wisdom and alertness not quite of our age." - Rory Stewart
"James Rebanks writes like a dream." - Monty Don
"Deeply felt and moving ... the friendship in the book is hard won, and all the more beautiful for that. It is the most inspiring book I've read for years." - Jenny Linford
“Deceptively simple, emotionally surprising, beautiful, and true.” - Melissa Harrison
“A love letter to the quiet and complex majesty of a little-known landscape and the women that tirelessly tend to it. It moved, humbled and educated me and made a place I have never set my eyes on suddenly vivid and close.” - Vanessa Kisuule
“The Place of Tides is terrific – so honest and strange. It’s somehow about eider ducks, middle age, one woman’s breathtaking skill and determination, the collapse of the natural order and everything in between. I think it’s Rebanks’s best book yet.” - Sam Knight
"The Place of Tides reminds readers that small acts of care for our environment can result in great things when done over time. Quietly enchanting, this book offers readers an oasis of calm in our turbulent world.”
- Catherine Hollis, BookPage
“This is a lovely book, almost dreamlike in its lulling rhythms." - Washington Post
"A journey to a new way of being ... on an isalnd 900 miles from Iceland, in a place dictated 'by the coming and going of the tides,' Rebanks learned, above all, a new rhythm for the rest of his life ... a quiet memoir of profound change." - Kirkus Reviews
“An extraordinary story, gently told. This was just the book I needed.” - Nigel Slater, author of A Thousand Feasts
“A spellbinding story of wildness, healing, and nature. A message we all need to hear, told with immense honesty and vulnerability. Magical!” - Julius Roberts, author of The Farm Table
“Unfolding like a Nordic Decameron, this is a book for a wide readership, with spare prose . . . It is a book of bitten beauty, full of keen observations, and, for all its reverence, it is one of reckoning. On the cusp of the Arctic, during a magical harvest, a single-minded farmer is forced to face his own demons.” - Country Life
“Surprisingly gripping . . . Rebanks excels at describing the raw beauty of the island.” - Daily Mail (UK)
“In this soulful account, Rebanks reflects on working alongside one of the last traditional ‘duck women,’ who care for eider ducks during nesting season, on Norway’s Vega Archipelago. . . . A wistful depiction of a vanishing way of life, this will move readers.” - Publishers Weekly
“I love this book. It has deepened my world considerably, feathered my spiritual nest.” - Rachel Kushner
"The Place of Tides is all that I want from a story: poetic, true, and full of feeling.” - Marcus Mumford, lead singer of Mumford & Sons
“In honed prose akin to that of Hemingway, Rebanks weaves a quietly captivating fable about what it means to be true to your roots and your longing to save a dying world.” - Sydney Morning Herald
“A fable-like tale, as beautiful and elusive as the idea of home and self it seeks to recover.” - Richard Flanagan, Booker Prize–winning author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North
“A transfixing, tender, and open-hearted account of a spring spent with two remarkable people … Rebanks captures nature’s exquisiteness [and] quietly captivates the human heart. . . . It is a beautiful journey.” - Irish Times
“A profound reflection on the natural world.” - Evening Standard (London)
“James Rebanks has done a miraculous thing. He takes the reader with him to a stark, remote island on the strangest mission in the toughest circumstances and makes you feel like you’re coming home. A profound, transformative, uplifting story.” - Isabella Tree
“[An] enchanting book . . . [Rebanks] writes of his season with the duck women with elegance, acuity and a rare tenderness.” - The Times Literary Supplement
“An elegiac tale . . . It is a book of stillness, quiet, vigilance, and the kind of patience that is measured not in hours but in lifetimes.” - FT
"Lyrical and enchanting . . . Rebanks is an extraordinary writer, and The Place of Tides will linger in the mind for a long time." - The Telegraph
“A quietly profound book. It is a story about a still-essential way of living in the modern world and finding a way to keep going. It is also a deft travelogue to one of the world’s wildest seascapes. . . . [Rebanks’s] assured narrative paints a picture of a wondrous world. It is one that few of us will ever visit but are all the better for knowing about.” - The Sunday Times
“A charismatic portrait of fidelity and the true meaning of home.” - Nick Offerman
