* With its Bible-size characters, its feeling for workaday rhythms and the cycle of th seasons, its tall and grisly tales of storms and wrecks , whales and sharks , witches and fetches, drownings and exhumations, it does convey a sense of that fatalistic awe which the sea inspired in those deeply devout fishing communities. Times Literary Supplement * ... a magical memory of childhood ... powerful, vivd, evocative, funny, awesome, loving and so assured in its writing it catches the breath. Glasgow Herald