The Sea Bed

(Paperback)

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Description

The Sea Bed follows the journey of a Buddhist monk, who leaves the safe predictability of his mountain monastery and ventures into the world to carry out a fellow monk's dying request. When he encounters abalone diving women in a remote coastal village, he is torn between dedication to his task and surrendering to desire. While the monk skirts around the edges of the sea women community, at its heart is Chicken, a young diver witnessing the extinction of a way of life that has been her family's for generations. If only her sister Lilli returned, perhaps somehow that would bring renewal. But the past and its secrets weigh heavily on Lilli and she had her own reasons for disappearing all those years ago. Each of these characters is locked in their own isolation, yet their stories are connected in deep and sometimes surprising ways. A beautifully observed, lucid and evocative novel, The Sea Bed is an illuminating story of love, family and change.

Reviews

"An unworldly, other-worldly story, by turns affecting and humorous and always absorbing . . . [a] marvelous novel." "New York Times Book Review" on "Lambs of God""
"Day's writing combines subtlety with profundity . . . she has deliberately avoided the pitfalls of presenting us with stereotypes or parodies of how we in the West tend to view the Japanese way of life. In "The Sea Bed," we are given insights into traditions and customs that few of us have had the opportunity of experiencing." "Australian""

Author Bio

Marele Day is the award-winning author of Lambs of God as well as Mrs Cook: The Real and Imagined Life of the Captain's Wife, and the Claudia Valentine mystery series - The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender, The Case of the Chinese Boxes, The Last Tango of Delores Delgado and The Disappearances of Madelana Grimaldi.