Coasting cover art

Coasting

A Private Journey

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Coasting

By: Jonathan Raban
Narrated by: James Langton
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About this listen

Put Jonathan Raban on a boat and the results will be fascinating, and never more so than when he’s sailing around the serpentine, two-thousand-mile coast of his native England. In this acutely perceived and beautifully written book, the bestselling author of Bad Land turns that voyage—which coincided with the Falklands war of 1982—into an occasion for meditations on his country, his childhood, and the elusive notion of home.

Whether he’s chatting with bored tax exiles on the Isle of Man, wrestling down a mainsail during a titanic gale, or crashing a Scottish house party where the kilted guests turn out to be Americans, Raban is alert to the slightest nuance of meaning. One can listen to Coasting for his precise naturalistic descriptions or his mordant comments on the new England, where the principal industry seems to be the marketing of Englishness. But one always listens to it with pleasure.

©1987 Foreign Land Ltd. (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing Europe Travel Writing & Commentary Western Europe Sailing
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Profile Image for Greg Dunn

Excellent book, but not narrated by author

I read this remarkable book in the my late 20s, soon after it was published, and found it profoundly moving at the time. Returning to it as a sixtysomething is an even richer experience, and pleasing to find that my youthful exuberance in rating it a ‘top ten book for life’ was justified.

I so wanted to give this rendition the full fifteen stars, but to my ear, the narrator delivers it with too much Boys Own excitement. Far better that the commissioning editors had cast Mr Raban to narrate, as he has a marvellous speaking voice, with an RP English accent that hasn’t been dimmed by thirty years living in Seattle.

Highly recommended, if you can live with the narration.

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