His account of this and his reminiscences and memories of his father give the book a different dimension. At the end of the book, too, when life deals him another unpleasant blow, the whole meaning of the book is retrospectively changed. Raban, of course, is not the first writer to discover the metaphorical power of the sea, but his use of it is appropriately subtle and fluid. And the reader, too, is caught up in the metaphor. And Raban charts this journey in his own humorous, moving, thoughtful and inimitable, way.
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