Sea State: SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE

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Ongoing Covid restrictions, reduced air and freight capacity, high volumes and winter weather conditions are all impacting transportation and local delivery across the globe. The author wished to see what men were like without having women around and although other reviewers perhaps did not agree I believe the author achieved her aim.

What Lasley wants to know is what men, alone, do to one another, and how the ways that they are changed by what they do shape the way they relate to the women they meet on land. Through her interviews, she learns that the rigs are breeding grounds for “antifemale paranoia,” where men encourage one another to see women as sirens who cheat, or use pregnancies or divorces to gain money. (Around five per cent of riggers are women.) Lasley is repeatedly told that no man ever wants to get married, yet she is still surprised by the number who tell her about their affairs, which are explained as a way to “let off steam.” One man shows Lasley an ultrasound scan before hitting on her. Less surprising are those who are classically possessive, like the one who headbutts his iPad, while FaceTiming his girlfriend, because she is going out and he can do nothing about it. How can you say you’re writing a book about what men are like with no women around when you are, in fact, a woman around them and that is your only context? How does that work? In this regard, "Sea State" doesn’t work at all, particularly when there is such a focus on women and the author’s own womanhood. None of the women are portrayed particularly well, and the way Lasley writes about other women feels fairly dismissive and at times drenched in her own internalized misogyny. She actually writes very well and I really enjoyed the book. I grew up in a part of Scotland where everyone knew someone who worked off shore, I’ve heard the same stories as Tabitha about the suicides, accidents and experiences of female workers on the rigs and don’t doubt the authenticity of the stuff she was told. I’d like to say that I called my boyfriend and put our relationship out of its misery that instant. I didn’t. What I did do was make a private pact with myself, to stop lying. I would not marry him. I would not tie myself to him for the rest of my life, or even a small portion of it. That was the day I gave up pretending. Lasley is a gifted interlocutor.... The book’s hybrid of ethnography, journalism and disclosure might have been disastrous in the hands of someone without Lasley’s candor and style. Instead, “Sea State” accomplishes what many memoirs do not: It organizes a messy life with a clear vision.” — New York Times Book Reviewone of the best I've read about men and women..." - the book does dwell on the subject of relations between the sexes. A lot of the observations, though, aren't examined further, especially in the light of class, which I'll explain next. I know another writer, Owen, who is also an alumnus of the night-time economy. I ask if he ever took cocaine on the job. He took it on every job, he says. As a pot washer at a chain hotel. A barman at a Toby Carvery. A cashier at an all-night garage. I know what he means. Some days, I still want it. Especially if I’ve had a drink, or seen actors take it on TV. The whole preparation ritual – the heaped flakes on the table, the tap of plastic on glass, the rolling of the note – makes my mouth water, the way an alcoholic’s must at the sight of vodka sloshed over ice. I don’t expect the urge will ever leave me. But it no longer nags at me during work hours, because my new job is far more enjoyable. It’s interesting. The pay is better. My legs don’t hurt.

Sea State marks the arrival of a gifted and exciting new voice’ Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13

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In recent years, there has been a constant flow of stories about the government’s plans to shame this sort of user into sobriety. Something will happen that indicates cocaine is now ubiquitous, commonplace. First come the findings: traces in the water; the Houses of Parliament swabs. Then come the winking editorials, the confessional features: My Secret Life as a Fancy Coke Addict. Then finally, the fulminating politicians. Lasley] has the skill, a Joan Didion kind of skill, of inflecting non-fiction material subjectively, a habit of assessing situations via her nervous system. . . . Sea State has all the presentness of fiction, as well as the exactitude of the non-fiction novel and the gleam of confession. [Lasley] conjures an industry and a place, but much more than that, she shows us the men themselves, and their relation to her, a mysterious tale of love and fear.” In this breathtaking debut, Lasley, a former journalist, interrogates class, love, and politics as she chronicles the months she spent interviewing offshore oil riggers in Aberdeen, Scotland… Rendered in irresistible prose, her whirlwind affair becomes a humanizing subplot and an arresting character study of the prototypical oil rigger, one who compartmentalizes home and work, wife and mistress, lavish spending and crushing isolation. The result is a compassionate portrayal of what it takes to survive an inhospitable corner of the world." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) and, above all, female desire" - sometimes the author does speak about this generally, however everything is so personal and filled with self criticism, insight and analysis about how it relates to her (and not to class or society in general) I don't think much is generally applicable. There's quite a lot of sex in this short book too, and, surprisingly, it's fairly sensitively written, with a little modern vulgarity added in.