The Living Will Say Hello (Picador Shorts) [Paperback]

An intimate, quirky, and soulful portrait of the many lives that swirl and teem in that microcosm of the universe, the ocean rock pool.

In this standalone extract from Adam NicolsonsLife Between the Tides, the reader gets a close-up view of some of the oceans most intriguing characters.

The sea is not made of water. Creatures are its genes. Look down as you crouch over the shallows and you will find a periwinkle or a prawn, a claw-displaying crab or a cluster of anemones ready to meet you. No need for binoculars or special stalking skills: go to the rocks and the living will say hello.

In this distilled version of the powerful, revelatoryLife Between the Tides, Adam Nicolson takes the reader on a wonder-filled tour of some of the animal residents of the rock pools that are the stage for so much of the life and poetry of the ocean.

We visit with the sandhopper, prawn, winkle, crab, and anemone, and each episode reenacts the books idea of the inner drama of life in this cloistered and vibrant space.

Nicolson writes with scientific rigor and a poets sense of wonder (The American Scholar). He animates the world of the rock pool and provides an essential perspective on a marine world as intricate and infinite as our own and not much further off than the tips of our noses.

TheLiving Will Say Hellois part of the Picador Shorts series Oceans, Rivers, and Streams, in which excerpts from beloved classics speak to our relationship with our water bodies, great and small.