Sea Bean

Product Information

Though I never felt this in words, it reminded me that there was a way out, that there was a way to make my suffering useful. Beautiful even.’ — Melissa Febos

Huband said:"I couldn’t have wished for a more enthusiastic home than the one that Sea Bean has found with Charlotte and the team at Windmill. I’m really excited to begin the process of working with Charlotte to transform a manuscript full of islands, storms, messages in bottles, mermaid’s purses, magical charms, sea glass, cetaceans and seabirds into a fully-fledged book."There are some sour paragraphs on breastfeeding and contamination of human milk which I felt should have been rounded out (although the (almost certainly deceptively) simple and abrupt words "I didn't enjoy it" perhaps explain why that was not the choice that was made in the writing or, apparently, the research). I was surprised too at the gaping hole where the controversies around the grindarap should be in the section on the Faroes (I don't think the word is even mentioned). Dystopian Fiction Books Everyone Should Read: Explore The Darker Side of Possible Worlds and Alternative Futures Moving to Shetland changed all that. She arrived in the islands in 2011 after spells in Edinburgh and Aberdeen, relocating with her helicopter pilot husband and their infant son. In Shetland the seas rage, the winds blow hard, and the haar can drop fast and hang around for days. She didn’t need a map to tell her she was nearer Stavanger than London, and as anyone who has been there knows the cultural and linguistic bonds between the archipelago and its northern neighbours are deep and abiding. “Shetland is quite a remarkable place, one of these places where myth and folklore feel very possible. It’s such a remarkable seascape and landscape that your mind is more easily opened to this otherworldly element.”

This book feels important — not only is its author incredibly skilled, but she offers a wider discussion around disability, mental health, motherhood, and how we are as humans no less vulnerable than our counterparts in “the wild”. Perhaps a timely reminder of how you occupy your time out there in the world, and crucially how we adjust our focus towards others outside of our own frames of experience. As Melissa Febos writes in Bodywork of her own biographical writing, it too feels here as if Huband’s writing is ‘ an act of resilience’. Sea Bean is a beautifully brave book about finding one's place in an uncertain world. For Sally Huband that place is the Shetland shoreline, where her extraordinary beachcombing finds in times of limiting illness connect her to the greater waters of wild wonder, ecological grief and the possibilities of community. It's a profoundly illuminating journey through the seas that ultimately encircle us all. But what makes this journey so special is that its movement comes from waiting; it emerges from the great patience and care needed to uncover the stories that are washed ashore from elsewhere. Sea Bean will change the way you look at the world's coasts Julian Hoffman Sea Bean is a coastal treasure. In Sally's writing, beachcombing - an old island pursuit - is modern, revealing and restorative. The next time I'm at the shore I will have a deeper appreciation and curiosity'. Amy Liptrot. Sea Bean is a beautifully brave book about finding one's place in an uncertain world. For Sally Huband that place is the Shetland shoreline, where her extraordinary beachcombing finds in times of limiting illness connect her to the greater waters of wild wonder, ecological grief and the possibilities of community. It's a profoundly illuminating journey through the seas that ultimately encircle us all. But what makes this journey so special is that its movement comes from waiting; it emerges from the great patience and care needed to uncover the stories that are washed ashore from elsewhere. Sea Bean will change the way you look at the world's coasts -- Julian HoffmanIn 2011 Huband moved with her family to Shetland during the first of the autumn storms that would pound the islands all winter long. Two years later, her second child was born on the islands, but during the pregnancy, the base of Sally's spine was damaged and the pregnancy also triggered the onset ofautoimmune disease. AsHuband's relationship with her body changed, she took to wandering the many strandlines of the archipelago to see what the sea had washed up. Sea Bean is a message in a bottle. An interconnection of our oceans, communities and ourselves, and an invitation to feel belonging when we are adrift. About This Edition ISBN: Elsewhere in the book Huband visits the Dutch island of Texel, which takes beachcombing so seriously that it appoints officials to oversee the collection of finds and the auctioning off of anything of value which isn’t claimed. And she delves deep into a beachcombing subculture, those whose own passion is for putting messages in bottles and trusting them to the tides. Or ‘sea post’ as Huband calls it.

Sally's search for a sea bean begins not long after she moves to the windswept archipelago of Shetland. When pregnancy triggers a chronic illness and forces her to slow down, Sally takes to the beaches. There she discovers treasure freighted with story and curiosities that connect her to the world. When I got my copy it came with a promotional postcard showing a message in a bottle which prompted me to message the publicist to tell her the story of my father finding this message in a bottle. She replied that this was the sort of connection the book was full of, it is, dad's story is mentioned in passing. It's also these connections, finding the things that draw us together that make island life work. Huband talks about building a community of care in a sometimes stifling community of place - she hasn't been afraid to speak out on contentious local issues - build enough connections with people and you can withstand the pressure to keep quite and keep the peace. So Huband had more than just beachcombing on her mind when she sat down to write Sea Bean, her first foray into long-form writing. Sally’s search for a sea bean begins not long after she moves to the windswept archipelago of Shetland. When pregnancy triggers a chronic illness and forces her to slow down, Sally takes to the beaches. There she discovers treasure freighted with story, and curiosities that connect her to the world. Sea Bean is a profoundly moving memoir that's perfect for fans of Raynor Winn, Helen Macdonald and Amy Liptrot.Sea Bean is a message in a bottle. An interconnection of our oceans, communities and ourselves, and an invitation to feel belonging when we are adrift. Huband emphatically does not do this. She moved to Shetland in 2011 with her husband and baby son. He is a helicopter pilot working in the oil industry. It's not a flexible job in terms of childcare so starting a family meant some difficult decisions for Sally - children weren't compatible with her academic career either where progression, and this is common to most jobs - is reliant on overwork in early years and often the need to move to where the jobs are. When he's offered a job in Shetland it sounds like taking it was an easy decision for the family. This is a book with real heart. As she scours the coastline of her wild island home, Huband shows us not only the delights of hunting for treasure amongst the detritus, but also the horrors of climate change in real time. It will change the way I look at beaches forever -- Lulah Ellender Which leads well into the use of the myth. Throughout the book, found objects are placed within stories told and retold across generations. Catshark eggcases figure in a Shetland folktale about Death and grief, while the sea bean, we are told, has been used as a protective charm all along the north-east Atlantic, and an aid during childbirth. However, in the book’s unexpected final chapter, the discovery of a story of Shetland women accused of witchcraft reveals the sea bean to have once been linked to the devil. When Sally further discovers its modern use as a gift for survivors of domestic abuse, the message is clear. This is not simply one person’s story of recovery, but a story about all people, past and present injustices, and what we can learn about this from the shoreline and its gifts. As Sally writes, ‘in these islands it is not unusual for the weather, the body and magic to coalesce’.

My first connection with Sea Bean is that Huband lives in Shetland, close to where I grew up. The second came when I opened the envelope my proof copy came in; it had a postcard with a lino cut of a message in a bottle. A few years ago, my father found a bottle on a Shetland beach that allowed him to renovate an old phone box. It seemed like a good omen – and later I found his story alluded to – another connection. This is in many ways a lovely, interesting and well written book... which sometimes set my teeth on edge. Frequently this was to do with odd repetitions of words, although it starts on the beautiful cover with the title and the image (it's not a sea bean). I think you'd be disappointed not to encounter lots of local language in a book like this but it felt weird to have 'bonxie' italicised every time it appears... I rather suspect more people now know these challenging birds as bonxies than as great skuas. I felt that 'palindromic rheumatism' was repeated in full almost like an incantation - this being the unusual form of arthritis which she develops following the birth of her second child and which constrains her activities.Her succinct summery of what’s happening with the local windfarm development is an example of something that’s proved beyond the control of local people to change. The power generated will be cabled down to mainland Scotland, Shetland will be left to deal with the consequences of becoming an industrialised landscape just as its beaches collect the consequent rubbish of other industries. These days it’s verging on cliché to interpret women’s nature writing as a cypher for trauma or a means of understanding the human body. Yet it is impossible to ignore an ever-growing genre of Scottish nature ‘memoir’ that uses a re-encounter with the natural world for this very purpose. Equally, it is impossible to deny that this emerging form of nature writing is some of the most exciting work to be produced in Scotland today. Now, we can add Sally Huband’s Sea Bean to that list. Familiar in its form, like the best books of its kind, Huband’s debut works within these parameters to create something unique, weaving together mythology, community and ecology in a profoundly moving story of overcoming disability and rediscovering your place in the world. A line of dead seabirds scattered along the coastline catapults her into action, and she learns to respect the limitations of her body that she no longer recognises alongside the burgeoning realities of climate erosion’s impact on the shores she haunts. Her determination to seek out an elusive Sea Bean is a talismanic quest of her will not to yield to stagnation that instead yields her to hope in the bitter winds of change.