'A miracle of a book' CELIA PAUL

A stunning meditation on how the physical world can bring us back to earth from the edge of grief

In the aftermath of catastrophic loss, a mother and her young son cross the Atlantic, taking refuge in a wooden house on a remote strip of land. Viewed from the shore, where land meets sea, the horizon is a line that holds their attention and draws them in. Camera in hand, she charts their progress and starts to imagine new ways of being and a new existence for her small family.

Writing with precision and clarity, Coutts combines the real with the fictional, thinking through art, poetry, geology, maps and Minecraft to present a devastating and fierce reflection on intimacy and separation, the visible and the invisible and the fragility and strangeness of the ocean and its borders.

I loved reading What did the Deep Sea Say? Marion Coutts gently reveals to us a world seen as if for the first time. It's a miracle of a book -- Celia Paul
A strange and beautiful meditation on endings and edges, grief and hope, love and sorrow . . . What Did the Deep Sea Say? takes the reader into a liminal space rich in revelation and reflection -- Gavin Francis
Clear-eyed and courageous, her writing is an existential act -- Mark Wallinger

Marion Coutts is a writer and artist who has exhibited throughout the UK and internationally. She has held fellowships at Tate Liverpool and Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, and was a Research Fellow at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds. Her first book, The Iceberg, won the Wellcome Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Book Award for Biography. She is a Reader in Art at Goldsmiths, University of London.