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Fiction

Secrets of the Sea

Following the death of his parents in a car crash, eleven-year-old Alex Dove is torn from his life on a remote farm in Tasmania and sent to school in England. When he returns to Australia twelve years later, the timeless beauty of the land and his encounter with a young woman whose own life has been marked by tragedy, persuade him to stay. They marry, and he finds himself drawn into the eccentric, often hilarious dynamics of island life. Longing for children, the couple open their home to a disquieting guest, a teenage castaway, whose presence in their home begins to unravel their tenuously forged happiness.

Published
2008
Awards
Shortlisted for Commonwealth Writer’s Prize; longlisted for Miles Franklin Award

Reviews

If he has not previously earned the right to be considered a world writer, this novel should confirm it… A resonant fiction, affirmative and very human

John Linklater, Sunday Herald

A remarkable novel. It is brilliantly successful in portraying the forlorn, claustrophobic, gossipy, defiant little society in which it is set…This latest work shows Shakespeare to be one of our dozen or so best

Francis King, Literary Review

I read it with complete absorption, wholly immersed in its world. It has a palpability and veracity which is quite mesmerising. A tremendous piece of work.

William Boyd

Masterful…Secrets of the Sea is the delicate account of [two lovers’] coming together and drifting apart… Shakespeare has produced a work of rare beauty

Financial Times

Gripping…subtle but arresting

The Times

Engagement with the sea… its significance in the unplumbed depths of human psyche, is the real, undoubted strength of this novel

The Independent

Carefully measured storytelling in this enveloping tale of life’s small treasures lost and found

Sunday Times

An impressive, poignant piece of work

Sunday Telegraph

An astute portrayal of thoughtful characters…Elegant and enjoyable

Spectator

It reads absolutely true… A very good novel indeed

Scotsman