This was different! What a great true story. I felt like i was there, having escaped from the humdrum of normal life.
It was so interesting, fascinating, and made me want to go there myself and have this adventure.
What a resilient woman Anna was.
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

A true story, based on the fascinating life story of Anna, a Norwegian woman, now seventy years old, who for decades has spent each spring-time tending to the nesting needs of eider ducks on the remote island of Fjærøy, off the coast of Norway, just south of the Arctic.

Anna, known as a “duck woman”, provides safety and sanctuary for egg-laying female eider ducks, who will in return, leave nests padded with valuable eider-down, available to be collected upon the birth and release to sea of their furry ducklings.

When James Redbank, the author, a sheep farmer from Britain who has found himself ‘unmoored and frustrated’ with his own connection to the things that really matter, convinces Anna to allow him to join her to observe and assist in her upcoming sojourn to “the Place of Tides”, (as the remote island is colloquially known), this narrative is born.

And what a charming narrative it is.

Anna is a remarkable woman, or really, an “ordinary woman leading an extraordinary life”, which is certainly true as compared to modern urban life in Norway. As James journeys along with Anna and her friend Ingrid (herself a “trainee” duck woman), setting up camp in a little white house with no running water, a compost toilet in a hut, and only occasional electricity from a small generator, this beautifully written tale melds into an otherworldly rewind to a simpler time, bordered by physical work, an intense communion with the natural world, and a philosophical reflection on the meaning of connection itself, and how to recognize its centrality in a meaningful life.

This is a lovely, soul-soothing and inspiring read, a gentle reminder that slowing down, turning back the clock, and rethinking our focus boasts untold hidden treasures — and for some of us, a psychological reset that may be long overdue.

A great big thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.

** four and a half shiny stars

I didn't know what to expect from this. I'm not sure I've come across anything else from the author. I'd seen it, it's advertised everywhere as coming soon and I was like, oh I should check this out.

And it's a really good read. And I think it's so good because it takes you away from how modern life is now. And it takes you on this whole world of nothing. But nothing isn't nothing. It's captivating. It's inspiring. it's just I suppose the connection to real people really enjoyed it

A beautifully written story of how things were and how things have become. There's so much missing in todays life. Touching and thought provoking.

I really enjoyed reading The Place of Tides. James delivered the story of Anna & Ingrid in a quiet and thoughtful way which made me feel completely immersed in the landscape and traditions. One part that stuck with me was learning about the collection of eiderdown. Who knew such a delicate, ancient practice could be so fascinating? It was explained it in a way that feels almost magical, while showing the real connection people have with nature.

Overall, it’s a beautifully written book that feels both calming and rich with meaning. It reminded me how much there is to learn from the land and the people who care for it.

I absolutely adore James’ writing, and this is no exception. He carried the story so eloquently, making it so easy to picture this remote Norwegian island and the fantastic characters who belong there.

An elderly woman heads to a remote island to collect duck feathers. James Rebanks was so mesmerised by his meeting with the woman that years later he joined her on the island. The Place of Tides is about that time but also about his farm in the Lake District and change. Beautiful, you will never view a bright green field in quite the same way ever again.

A lovely poetic book, with exquisite writing. James Rebanks describes his sojourn on the remote Norwegian island with two older women, preparing for the arrival of the eider ducks, with gentle insight and candid beauty.

It seemed odd to me at first that he should have left his family to join Anna alone on the island, but all becomes clearer as the text unfolds and Anna shines out as a beacon of human decency, honesty and how we need to survive to prevent us as a species from wrecking this lovely planet

This is a wonderfully compelling read about the ancient trade of Norway’s "duck women." Eider ducks, an elusive breed, nest in the remote islands of the archipelago. Their precious feathers are collected and sold to make eiderdowns (islander's gold).

I was drawn to this book because I had recently travelled across the mainland of Norway and loved the country and its people.
The author follows one woman (Anna) in her 70s as she travels to the island for one last season to work with the eider ducks. She is joined by her friend Ingrid. This part of Norway is a remote, harsh environment for the ducks to lay eggs and leave the eider feather behind when they leave. Anna shares the history of this beautiful area, duck work (hard and dirty), and her family's connection to these islands. Anna and Ingrid were steadfast in their work and legacy.
I loved the author’s style and gift for writing wonderfully evocative prose..
"The bare birch and rowan trees caught the sun and shone like fish bones"
"Half a dozen gulls were held on the wind, frozen in time above the island, as if caught in a photograph"

Anna and Ingrid were steadfast in their work, unassuming people with the strength and resilience to live and work in such a harsh environment. Anna was the engine of this place. At the beginning of this book, the author suggests this journey is his opportunity to take stock of his life and reenergise his commitment to family and farming back home. As readers, this aspect of the journey is played down, giving space for Anna and Ingrid, who commit their lives to care for these shy, timid creatures.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, exploring this part of Norway, and learning about the lives of duck women and eider ducks. I urge avid readers of nature and the natural world to pick this one up.

Thank you, Netgalley, the publisher and author, for the opportunity to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Tying in to my non-fiction nature-based binge of this year, this true story follows James to a remote Norwegian island known for its eiderdown, to spend a season with Anna, a duck-woman.
The setting for this was captured with so much crisp detail I could've been sat beside them on their front porch and I felt that Rebanks wrote about his time with Anna and Ingrid so carefully and with so much respect to their traditional practises.
There are so many nuances to each story, and when these stories are so tied up in our cultures and histories and identities, I'm certain it must have taken Anna so much courage and determination not only to host James on her island, but to then share her story with him as much as she was able.

Having loved his last book, I enjoyed this book greatly, especially his clearly deep reverence for the natural world, and the ways of life that maintain it. His journey starts as a more general tale of him trying to understand 'the old ways', but soon develops into something much deeper- a sense of belonging, to land, nature and the people who work with it.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I didn’t know what to expect by the last work by James Rebanks, “The Place of Tides”, but now I know what it left me: beauty.
“The Place of Tides” is a lucid and touching portrait of the duck women, i.e. women who prepared eider ducks’ nests in isles of Archipelago Vega, Norway, every spring, and particularly of Anna, this amazing, tough 70-year-old lady at her last season as duck woman who charmed me, and so I want to thank Rebanks to let me know Anna, Ingrid and the other, these ordinary heroines, who take care of the ecosystem and try to heal this Earth ill-treated by men.
Every spring, eider ducks take refuge in these islets for the clutch and every year, the Archipelago Vega women take care of them and protect them by predators. In exchange ducks leave their downs that they use to build their nests, which are collected to make the fine eiderdown duvets. An all-female collaborations. I adored Anna and Ingrid, their little heaven, a women and ducks’ island and I dreamed of being there with them (and Anna, I understand you perfectly when you don’t want men to interfere with your delicate work). Viva the duck women, who keep alive this traditions and, at the same time, take care of Mother Nature, like real hudras.

What a wonderful book. An unexpectedly absorbing story.....on small islands off the Norwegian coast, the Wider ducks next and read their young. An extraordinary section of Norwegian families live their lives around the seasonal cycle of the lives of the ducks: these are the Duck Women, who forsake their families and life's small comforts to live on the islands, often solitary, in basic conditions. Before the ducks arrive, the nests are cleaned and repaired in all weather's so that they will be ready. Once inhabited, they are checked and cared for, predators seen off and protected from weather damaged to their homes, no matter the weather. The precious, lightweight down cares for the young and it is only after they leave that the same down is collected and the Duck Women become even more hard working, to collect clean and prepare their product. An amazing study of a diminishing way of life. A huge amount of respect and appreciation for these women who continue their family traditions with fortitude and great philosophy. If you are lucky enough to own an Elder duvet, guard it and keep it - and send thanks to the Duck Women.

This story is about the women who go out to the remote Norwegian islands to help the wild eider ducks during nesting season, and collect the resulting down after. The author goes out and shares Anna's final season with her friend Ingrid, and learns the traditional tasks of preparing the nests, and the island to encourage as many ducks as possible to come. He tells the stories of these women and the history of when it was a thriving industry, plus his own journey of self discovery. Beautifully written, captures the sights, sounds and feeling of being part of something truly unique

When women were islands, and seas were roads
—
There are books about islands, and books about women, and books about women on islands. There are classics of the field, like The Summer Book. There is this.

It’s a haunting, evocative book, telling the many lives of Anna, an old Norwegian woman on her last trip as an eider gatherer. There are stories of her life, of her relatives, the tales they told, the myths of Norway and of the remote Atlantic coast where she gathers her riches of eiderdown. Rebanks recounts his own connection to Anna’s dying craft, the connections with his own farming history and present.

But what does the author want to say with the book? Anna is not the last of her breed, as the accompanying (relatively) younger woman is there to learn. Rebanks admits at the opening of the book that they don’t share much language, and yet the book is rich with Anna’s rememberings and secret knowledge; but where does this come from? The book wafted over me, a steady flow of myths of remoteness, of unknowable human actions, of people and lives that attest to the indomitable spirit of humans to live where they can. At the end I felt only that I read a book that recorded something with importance, but which had been transmitted to me through a third party, and in the transmitting had lost whatever it was that caught Rebanks’s own eye.

A readable three stars.

The Place of Tides is beautifully written and transports you to another place where time is spent in an entirely different way to that of modern life. I loved this book and couldn't put it down. I wanted to know everything about Anna, and to follow her stories past and present. What an interesting and strong woman, whose work has preserved tradition, conservation, and played a role in future generations culture . James Rebanks writing is captivating, lyrical and inspiring. His words make you feel like you're reading a fantasy or fairy tale when in fact it is non-fiction. I would highly recommend. I chose this for our store book club group and majority of the members all loved it too.

The Place of Tides is a contemplative and introspective read, offering a beautifully written exploration of memory, identity, and the profound connection between people and the places that shape them. While the book is undeniably well-crafted, it occasionally feels as though its core material—a thoughtful and evocative meditation—might have been better suited to a long-form magazine article rather than a full-length book.

That said, the quality of the prose is undeniable, with passages that linger in the mind long after reading. The author excels at creating vivid, atmospheric descriptions, as seen in lines such as:
“The tide whispered against the shingle, retreating in rhythms as old as the earth itself, leaving behind its treasures—fragments of shell, pieces of driftwood, a necklace of seaweed strung across the shore like a gift from the sea.”

Similarly, the introspective tone allows for moments of deep reflection, such as:
“We do not leave the places we love; they cling to us, weaving themselves into our very being until we carry them like shadows, even when the light shifts and they’re no longer visible.”

While these moments of brilliance are scattered throughout the text, the narrative as a whole occasionally feels stretched thin, as though the central themes and ideas are revisited one too many times in slightly different guises. The book’s introspective nature, while a strength, sometimes slows the pacing, making it feel less like a novel and more like an extended essay with fictional elements woven in.

This was beautifully written, but I found it very slow to read. I was intrigued by the blurb and I think it was quite accurately described; however, this was not a book that I connected with. The setting is stunning and it is certainly an unusual way of life to observe, though the telling is a little repetitive in places. I am sure the fault is mine rather than the writer's as this wasn't one I feel I would recommend to a friend to read.

A story so beautifully crafted and clearly told that I thought it must have been based on a true experience. We learn of the hardships endured by the Norwegian women who faced difficult, lonely conditions to harvest eider feathers each year and the simple life lessons they were able to pass on to an outsider who learned to adapt to their pace and to exist without the luxuries normally taken for granted.

Beautiful and through provoking study of a dying way of life. Rebanks interplays on his own journey to a remote island to spend the summer with Anna, a Norweigan 'Duck Woman' - reflecting on his own desire for solitude and uncovering her life story as thier bond forms. Wonderfullly written and a true study in the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. Highly recommend, even if you've never wondered where Eiderdown comes from - you'll be mesmerised!