Countdown #2 to Ocean launch!
What's Ocean about? Plus welcome to new subscribers and recommendations
Good morning on day 2 of the countdown to Ocean sweeping into your inbox!
First, a heartfelt thank you and welcome to the new subscribers who joined since the announcement yesterday. It means such a lot to me that you’re here. Ocean is going to have such a warm community to arrive into. Also to my subscribers from my previous website — thank you for staying with me!
Between now and April 25th I plan to reach as many new subscribers as possible, so that we’re all starting on the book at the same point. It is going to be simple to toggle around between episodes, so people can join at any time, but it will be really fun to have lots of us plunge in with a big splash! (lots of water metaphors I’m afraid).
So if you can think of book-loving / podcast-listening friends who might enjoy Ocean, please share this post with them. Thank you so much.
What Ocean is about, and some more details
OCEAN is a hurricane of a book… breathtakingly cruel and beautiful at the same time. An exceptional adventure full of character and suspense – and a story about how a traumatising event in a marriage can change a whole life.
Julia Eisele
EISELE PUBLISHING
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger — or so they say. What if life carries on after the annihilating event? How do we live meaningfully in a world where meaning has been obliterated? In Ocean, one woman’s quest for answers takes her on a voyage from the tunnels of the Underground to the furthest reaches of the sea, to where, at life’s limits, the greatest force of all is love.
Caught in a terrorist explosion on the London underground, Helen is pregnant and lost, until a stranger leads her to safety. Obsessed with finding the man who saved her life then vanished, she embarks on a search that threatens to tear her family apart. Desperate to save their relationship, her husband Frank proposes a radical solution: selling their possessions and sailing the Atlantic with their son, Nicholas, and foster child, Sindi. But this will be no ordinary voyage: the boat Frank finds for the journey is the Innisfree, the vessel where Helen and Frank met and fell in love as young free spirits years before.Â
At first, their escape from society brings the promise of a new life. But as they struggle to survive treacherous seas, surrounded by the ocean’s unpredictable creatures, The Innisfree, that once brought them together, becomes a crucible of passion and conflict. As the bonds that hold the family together are tested to breaking point, Helen is once again at the mercy of forces beyond her control. But this time there is no stranger to intervene and, as skipper, she must sacrifice everything to save her crew. Ocean is an enthralling tale, unfolding at the limits of what we understand of life and death. Polly Clark crafts a narrative that transcends the ordinary, exploring love, loss, and the resilience we find when faced with the overwhelming forces of both nature and the heart.
From Chapter Three
Hard concern rode the plains of the therapist’s face. I writhed on my horrible chair several miles beyond the tissue box.
‘Let’s talk about it,’ she said.
‘Talk about what?’
‘Your fury.’
‘I’m not furious.’
But spittle did sail from my lips and I believe land upon her watch-face. She didn’t blink, instead she pointed, with a palely manicured finger at my coat, which I had not taken off. The breathing world was arctic at all times now, no matter the actual temperature, presence of sun or not. The physical universe didn’t follow the old rules anymore. You try surviving a bomb blast and see if you start experiencing reality differently, and wearing inappropriate clothing, I wanted to say but did not.
A reminder about what’s coming!
To celebrate the launch of Wild Ink, Ocean will be delivered to every subscriber’s inbox in twice-weekly episodes, just like the great novels of Dickens and Trollope (and Salman Rushdie!). The illustrated text comes with the episode as a podcast, which will build to a complete series. I know from my current readers that Ocean is a novel you are keen to have available and I am delighted that I can offer it this way, on my own terms. This specially adapted version of Ocean will also feature extras, such as audio commentary, background, and footage from my ocean sailing research:
For more on what subscribing to Wild Ink offers, whether free or paid please click here.
And finally…
a shoutout to the magnificent
who has given me such a lot of advice and support in building this site. Do check out ‘The Mule’, her Substack, which publishes an essential newsletter The Word is Woman. Also to whose site is a wonderful and affirming place for readers to hang out. It’s called ‘On the Way life Feels’ and is about exactly that!I’m sending out some more recommendations in a separate digest. In the meantime, till #3 countdown, thank you, and do please share!