A poetic and ethereal book about a man's relationship with the sea ( )

Lovely writing as one expects from Winton, but really, not an overly memorable read. ( )

There is nowhere else I'd rather be, nothing else I would prefer to be doing. I am at the beach looking west with the continent behind me as the sun tracks down to the sea.

This brief memoir-essay was pressed on me by my mother, with the unpromising comment that all her friends had disliked it but that it captured her own idea of what Australia means. My parents moved there ten years ago, but this is what home is to them now: standing on wet sand in the sun with a vast landmass at their backs and the sea stretching out in front. That's when they know they're home. That little interzone between the land and the ocean is, for Tim Winton too, the quintessence of being Australian and the quintessence, also, of being a writer, exploring the edges and the margins.

A critic once called me a ‘literalist’, which delighted me. For, despite his faulty spelling, he got me right; I am a ‘littoralist’, someone who picks over things at the edges.

Australia is a gargantuan country, and most of it is uninhabitable; squint a little, and you have the impression of a narrow band of humans clinging on to the edges of an unwelcoming continent. Drive a couple of hours inland, and it's like going back in time – suddenly it's all wooden signs, dusty main streets, tottering watertowers and leathery men sinking schooners in the Town & Country. Civilisation peters out away from the coast: and the beach looms correspondingly large in Australian consciousness. This is, Winton says,

where we test and prove our physical prowess, where we discover sex; it is often the site of our adulterous assignations, and where we go to face our grown-up failures. In the end, it is where we retire in the sun to await the unknown.

Land's Edge is a dreamy, nostalgic memoir told in a smooth Australian English that's full of muttonfish, jarrah, Hills hoists, mulloways and Patterson's curse. It's really too short to reach any profound conclusions about coastal mentality, and it's disappointingly light on Winton's own creative process or writing life – but for anyone looking for a burst of distilled Aussie contemplation, this goes down very smoothly. ( )