Sea State: A Memoir

by Tabitha Lasley

Overview

A Recommended Read from: Vogue * USA Today * The Los Angeles Times * Publishers Weekly * The Week * Alma * Lit Hub

A stunning and brutally honest memoir that shines a light on what happens when female desire conflicts with a culture of masculinity in crisis

In 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.

In 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.

Sea State 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.

Sea State is 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063030855
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	12/07/2021
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Tabitha Lasley was a journalist for ten years. She has lived in London, Johannesburg, and Aberdeen. This is her first book.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

1 T Block 1

2 Foum Assaka 33

3 Tiffany 59

4 T-211 79

5 Tern 103

6 Brent Field 125

7 Piper Bravo 149

8 Ninian Central 167

9 Clyde 191

Acknowledgments 221

Editorial Reviews

★ 09/20/2021

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. When asked by her former editor why she was interested in writing about oil rigs, Lasley replied, “I want to see what men are like with no women around.” In the year leading up to Britain’s exit from the European Union, Lasley—spurred by a bad breakup and a home robbery leading to the theft of her laptop and the book she’d been writing on it—quit her job at a London magazine and moved to Aberdeen to embark on her investigation. For six months, she conducted interviews with 103 oil riggers, mostly in bars, but her dalliance with her first interview subject, a married man named Caden, sent her original plan to hear out an industry of men who “felt like no one was listening” into a tailspin. 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. Agent: Tracy Bohan, the Wylie Agency. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

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.” — New York Times Book Review

“A singular and refreshingly candid travel memoir.” — Los Angeles Times

“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, Sea State offers a close up view of the white, working-class resentments that helped fuel both Brexit and the Trump presidency.” — Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

“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.” — The Nation

“A sharp take on masculinity, class and the intoxicating danger of attraction.”  — People

"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." — The Atlantic

“Sea State 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.” — Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes

“Sea State 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.” — The Guardian

"Lasley has written a unique book, a cross between Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Prime of Life: reportage on the English working class that is also a lucid travelogue." — BookForum

“A raw, bold, unsparing memoir.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Acidic, addictive reporting . . . Sea State’s writing alone is worth the admission price.” — Financial Times

“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 Millions

"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." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Grippingly candid and savagely self-aware.”  — Esquire (UK)

"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. Sea State marks the arrival of a gifted and exciting new voice."  — Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13

“By any measure it’s extraordinary. It takes you to places so few books do.” — The Observer

“Reading Lasley’s prose is like having a long conversation with someone highly intelligent, intuitive and more sensitive than she dares let on.” — The Spectator

“[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. . . . Sea State 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.”
— Andrew O’Hagan, London Review of Books

"Piercing, brutally candid, addictive. Sea State 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 Three Women, this is for you." — Rachel Cooke, author of Her Brilliant Career

"A breathtakingly bold, honest and original book, I didn't want it to end." — Decca Aitkenhead, author of All at Sea

 "Tabitha Lasley throws herself into a dangerous, liminal world and crawls back battered, chastened, bearing a haul glittering with insight. Brilliantly propulsive." — Aida Edemariam, author of The Wife's Tale

From the Publisher

Sea State 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.

The Guardian

"Lasley has written a unique book, a cross between Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Prime of Life: reportage on the English working class that is also a lucid travelogue."

BookForum

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.

The Nation

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.

New York Times Book Review

A sharp take on masculinity, class and the intoxicating danger of attraction.” 

People

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, Sea State offers a close up view of the white, working-class resentments that helped fuel both Brexit and the Trump presidency.

Maureen Corrigan

Sea State 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.

Mary Beth Keane

"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."

The Atlantic

A singular and refreshingly candid travel memoir.

|Los Angeles Times

A singular and refreshingly candid travel memoir.

Los Angeles Times

Acidic, addictive reporting . . . Sea State’s writing alone is worth the admission price.

Financial Times

Acidic, addictive reporting . . . Sea State’s writing alone is worth the admission price.

Financial Times

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 Millions

Grippingly candid and savagely self-aware.” 

Esquire (UK)

By any measure it’s extraordinary. It takes you to places so few books do.

The Observer

"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. Sea State marks the arrival of a gifted and exciting new voice." 

Jon McGregor

"Piercing, brutally candid, addictive. Sea State 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 Three Women, this is for you."

Rachel Cooke

Reading Lasley’s prose is like having a long conversation with someone highly intelligent, intuitive and more sensitive than she dares let on.

The Spectator

"A breathtakingly bold, honest and original book, I didn't want it to end."

Decca Aitkenhead

"Tabitha Lasley throws herself into a dangerous, liminal world and crawls back battered, chastened, bearing a haul glittering with insight. Brilliantly propulsive."

Aida Edemariam

[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. . . . Sea State 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.”

Andrew O’Hagan

07/01/2021

Liberated of both job and relationship, journalist Lasley moved from London to Aberdeen and, as she relates in Sea State, worked on an oil rig—the better to understand how men behave with no women around and to witness masculine culture suddenly in crisis (50,000-copy first printing). In Cokie, Roberts recalls distinguished journalist Cokie Roberts, his wife of 53 years (150,000-copy first printing). A two-time All Pro Linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Shazier suffered a spinal-cord injury during a game and had to learn to walk again before he could finally dance with his wife at their wedding—a Walking Miracle that required the perseverance and strength he now applies to his post-game life (50,000-copy first printing). Having immigrated to the United States as a toddler, been paralyzed owing to gunshot as a gang member, and become an English professor after earning a master's degree in medieval literature, Silva addresses The Death of My Father the Pope, recalling a man who was an abusive alcoholic (originally scheduled for August; 30,000-copy first printing). As beloved British novelist Thomas relates in 41-Love, at age 41 she was healthier than ever and happily ensconced with a partner yet faced painful obstacles—the death of loved ones, the realization that she would never have children—that compelled her to return to an early love of her life: tennis. In A Calm Chaos, Walker, the psychiatrist on Bravo's Married to Medicine series and one of Essence's "Woke 100," relates life with a distant, addicted father, her own struggles with depression, and the later-in-life realization that her immigrant grandmother was bipolar, all contributing to her commitment to work with people who are mentally ill in inner cities (40,000-copy first printing).

Library Journal

Billie Fulford-Brown masterfully narrates this fascinating hybrid tale—part journalism, part memoir—of a 30-something woman who leaves London for Scotland to learn about the workers of offshore oil rigs. Against the backdrop of hardscrabble Aberdeen, Fulford-Brown brings a clear, inviting voice to the author, allowing a touch of Lasley’s Liverpool background to enter the posh accent. With youthful calm, Fulford-Brown depicts a recklessness that at times causes one to catch one’s breath as Lasley immerses herself professionally and personally in the world of North Sea oil workers. Fulford-Brown’s seamless shifts into a northeastern Scots accent adds to her portrayals. These are memorable characters whose tales of living for months on “floating bombs” are delivered in dismissive masculine tones—as if being told over pub drinks. D.H.R. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2022 - AudioFile

Billie Fulford-Brown masterfully narrates this fascinating hybrid tale—part journalism, part memoir—of a 30-something woman who leaves London for Scotland to learn about the workers of offshore oil rigs. Against the backdrop of hardscrabble Aberdeen, Fulford-Brown brings a clear, inviting voice to the author, allowing a touch of Lasley’s Liverpool background to enter the posh accent. With youthful calm, Fulford-Brown depicts a recklessness that at times causes one to catch one’s breath as Lasley immerses herself professionally and personally in the world of North Sea oil workers. Fulford-Brown’s seamless shifts into a northeastern Scots accent adds to her portrayals. These are memorable characters whose tales of living for months on “floating bombs” are delivered in dismissive masculine tones—as if being told over pub drinks. D.H.R. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2022 - AudioFile

★ 2021-10-07
An English ex-journalist’s account of how sex and class intertwined in an interview project that plunged her into the hostile world of the offshore oil industry.

When Lasley traveled to Aberdeen from London, she had one goal: to write about life on oil rigs and “see what men [were] like with no women around.” Her motivations were complex. She lost a book she was writing on oil rigs when her laptop was stolen from an apartment she shared with an abusive man she had tried to leave two times before. Her first interview subject was Caden, a married offshore oil rigger Lasley met as soon as she arrived. The attraction was immediate and powerful, and the two began an affair as the author started her research. The process of oil extraction, writes Lasley, involves a “pitched battle among human ingenuity, inhospitable terrain and highly combustible materials. The dangers are compounded by the locations’ remoteness.” Disasters, such as the Piper Alpha explosion in the North Sea in 1988, left many men traumatized. Yet working-class men continued to seek work on oil rigs because the onshore heavy-industry jobs on which they could count had all but disappeared. As Lasley discovered in her brief affair with Caden, offshore work culture created “antifemale paranoia” toward “women who ‘trapped’ them with pregnancy, spirited children away over borders…[and] pauperized them in divorce settlements.” Unlike the middle-class and educated author, other women on shore did not have the independent means to start their lives anew. Onshore jobs were as scarce for them as they were for men, and few women were willing to work on the rigs. In poetically hard-edged prose, Lasley explores offshore rigging culture and the anti–workers’ rights culture that created it. She also shows how the hypermuscular capitalism in which it is entrenched deforms, and often destroys, relationships.

A raw, bold, unsparing memoir.

Kirkus Reviews