{"product_id":"sea-state-a-memoir-isbn-9780063030831","title":"Sea State: A Memoir","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA Recommended Read from: \u003cem\u003eVogue * USA Today * The Los Angeles Times * Publishers Weekly * The Week * Alma * Lit Hub\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA stunning and brutally honest memoir that shines a light on what happens when female desire conflicts with a culture of masculinity in crisis\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn her midthirties and newly free from a terrible relationship, Tabitha Lasley quit her job at a London magazine, packed her bags, and poured her savings into a six-month lease on an apartment in Aberdeen, Scotland. She decided to make good on a long-deferred idea for a book about oil rigs and the men who work on them. Why oil rigs? She wanted to see what men were like with no women around.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn Aberdeen, Tabitha became deeply entrenched in the world of roughnecks, a teeming subculture rich with brawls, hard labor, and competition. The longer she stayed, the more she found her presence had a destabilizing effect on the men—and her.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSea State\u003c\/em\u003e is on the one hand a portrait of an overlooked industry: “offshore” is a way of life for generations of primarily working-class men and also a potent metaphor for those parts of life we keep at bay—class, masculinity, the transactions of desire, and the awful slipperiness of a ladder that could, if we tried hard enough, lead us to security.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSea State \u003c\/em\u003eis on the other hand the story of a journalist whose professional distance from her subject becomes perilously thin. In Aberdeen, Tabitha gets high and dances with abandon, reliving her youth, when the music was good and the boys were bad. Twenty years on, there is Caden: a married rig worker who spends three weeks on and three weeks off. Alone and in an increasingly precarious state, Tabitha dives into their growing attraction. The relationship, reckless and explosive, will lay them both bare.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“These are powerful and moving stories of working lives in a dangerous and all-male environment, made all the more powerful by the way Lasley refuses to absent herself from the telling.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Millions\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[Lasley] has the skill, a Joan Didion kind of skill, of inflecting non-fiction material subjectively, a habit of assessing situations via her nervous system. . . . \u003cem\u003eSea State\u003c\/em\u003e has all the presentness of fiction, as well as the exactitude of the non-fiction novel and the gleam of confession. [Lasley] conjures an industry and a place, but much more than that, she shows us the men themselves, and their relation to her, a mysterious tale of love and fear.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAndrew O’Hagan, London Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Acidic, addictive reporting . . . \u003cem\u003eSea State\u003c\/em\u003e’s writing alone is worth the admission price.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \"Tabitha Lasley throws herself into a dangerous, liminal world and crawls back battered, chastened, bearing a haul glittering with insight. Brilliantly propulsive.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAida Edemariam, author of The Wife's Tale\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"The hybrid work of memoir and unconventional journalism chronicles Lasley’s doomed romance with Caden alongside a consideration of the dangers of a life of oil extraction. Along the way, she learns not to trust her assumptions about men like Caden, places like Aberdeen, and women like herself.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Lasley has written a unique book, a cross between Bill Buford’s \u003cem\u003eAmong the Thugs \u003c\/em\u003eand Simone de Beauvoir’s \u003cem\u003eThe Prime of Life: \u003c\/em\u003ereportage on the English working class that is also a lucid travelogue.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBookForum\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A sharp take on masculinity, class and the intoxicating danger of attraction.”  - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A peculiar and entrancing blend of memoir and reportage…. Smart about sexual desire and the ease of analyzing — but the difficulty of escaping — familiar gender roles, \u003cem\u003eSea State \u003c\/em\u003eoffers a close up view of the white, working-class resentments that helped fuel both Brexit and the Trump presidency.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eMaureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Lasley’s memoir is at its best…a validation of failure, no matter how self-inflicted, as a story in its own right—one that can be told just as well as any other.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Nation\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Reading Lasley’s prose is like having a long conversation with someone highly intelligent, intuitive and more sensitive than she dares let on.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Spectator\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“S\u003cem\u003eea State\u003c\/em\u003e is so many things at once: an exploration of class, masculinity, desire, and the ways in which the work we do defines us. But alongside these huge subjects, it’s quite simply the story of a young woman who is lonely and finds herself in close proximity to a lot of lonely men. I was so impressed by how deftly Tabitha Lasley moves between the personal and the academic, and how much authority she maintains throughout. This is a truly powerful memoir.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eMary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A raw, bold, unsparing memoir.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A singular and refreshingly candid travel memoir.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"In this breathtaking debut, Lasley, a former journalist, interrogates class, love, and politics as she chronicles the months she spent interviewing offshore oil riggers in Aberdeen, Scotland… Rendered in irresistible prose, her whirlwind affair becomes a humanizing subplot and an arresting character study of the prototypical oil rigger, one who compartmentalizes home and work, wife and mistress, lavish spending and crushing isolation. The result is a compassionate portrayal of what it takes to survive an inhospitable corner of the world.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Lasley is a gifted interlocutor.... The book’s hybrid of ethnography, journalism and disclosure might have been disastrous in the hands of someone without Lasley’s candor and style. Instead, “Sea State” accomplishes what many memoirs do not: It organizes a messy life with a clear vision.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"In these accounts of the offshore men who do our dirty work for us, Tabitha Lasley has struck black gold. These are powerful and moving stories of working lives in a dangerous and all-male environment, made all the more powerful by the way Lasley refuses to absent herself from the telling.  The writing is carefully and unobtrusively polished, with hard edges and unflinching clarity, and a memorable turn of phrase. \u003cem\u003eSea State\u003c\/em\u003e marks the arrival of a gifted and exciting new voice.\"  - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Piercing, brutally candid, addictive. \u003cem\u003eSea State\u003c\/em\u003e is a memoir like no other: one of the best I've read about men and women, about social class and, above all, about female desire. If you were gripped by Lisa Taddeo's \u003cem\u003eThree Women\u003c\/em\u003e, this is for you.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eRachel Cooke, author of Her Brilliant Career\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A breathtakingly bold, honest and original book, I didn't want it to end.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDecca Aitkenhead, author of All at Sea\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003cem\u003eSea State\u003c\/em\u003e is, itself, a hybrid of sorts: an investigation that is also a confession but reads a lot like a novel. It is a startlingly original study of love, masculinity and the cost of a profession that few outside of it can truly understand. The cost to Lasley herself is yet to be revealed.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Grippingly candid and savagely self-aware.”  - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eEsquire (UK)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“By any measure it’s extraordinary. It takes you to places so few books do.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Observer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ecco","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44889588236517,"sku":"NP9780063030831","price":27.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780063030831.jpg?v=1730231555","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/sea-state-a-memoir-isbn-9780063030831","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}