Coasting cover art

Coasting

A Private Journey

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Coasting

By: Jonathan Raban
Narrated by: James Langton
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About this listen

Put Jonathan Raban on a boat and the results will be fascinating, and never more so than when he’s sailing around the serpentine, two-thousand-mile coast of his native England. In this acutely perceived and beautifully written book, the bestselling author of Bad Land turns that voyage—which coincided with the Falklands war of 1982—into an occasion for meditations on his country, his childhood, and the elusive notion of home.

Whether he’s chatting with bored tax exiles on the Isle of Man, wrestling down a mainsail during a titanic gale, or crashing a Scottish house party where the kilted guests turn out to be Americans, Raban is alert to the slightest nuance of meaning. One can listen to Coasting for his precise naturalistic descriptions or his mordant comments on the new England, where the principal industry seems to be the marketing of Englishness. But one always listens to it with pleasure.

©1987 Foreign Land Ltd. (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing Europe Travel Writing & Commentary Western Europe Sports Sailing
All stars
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This is such an important book. It is social commentary and observation about the Thatcher years and the divide between wealth creation and materialism and the reality of working people struggling either on the margins (waiting on their aged plywood sailboats on the mud flats for a high over the Azores for their escape from Britain) or against the hateful neo-liberalism that closed the mines and destroyed communities. These are genuine stories of his meandering around Britan in his 32 foot converted fishing-boat-to-sailboat during the Falklands War (which befuddles him as it did the rest of us as utterly pointless) and yes, his amateur sailing and his ability to write about the sea (which he is perhaps most famous for) is compelling for sure - but it is his descriptions of people on the land that is so powerful: amateur fishermen, miners on the picket lines, un employed young men helping him to moor up at Hull's empty fish dock - he is such a powerfully sensitive and empathetic, passionate humanist. Presumably this rather sad and depressing view of 1980's Britain was enough for him to more permanently to the US, and no one can blame him for that. Lovely understated description of catching up with his old hero, Larkin, at Hull Uni.

The narration is fine: for some reason that I can't explain I felt that the narrator didn't quite get the story himself and was, just, reading it. Love to have heard JR himself read this.

Highly recommended.

Philip Larkin, Sailing & Careful Social Commentary

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