He was obliged to scour ship chandleries up and down the coast for scarce fittings…

The title of the book alerts the reader to a central thesis here: while an island may have a granite foundation, it is always in flux, the tides, for one, bringing about constant change.

Strout exposes the dark side of adult experience: marital deceptions, voyeurism, status and wealth substituting for emotional capital, and trauma…

The ocean is unsayable, like a lot of the natural world. The night sky is unsayable. The energy in a seed. The sacrality of a maple leaf. The full moon. The mind of snow.

Tides ranges from the local to the oceanic, from the personal to the universal, from deep history to contemporary engineering…

The book's main narrative turns on daily life in the shop, which comes through vividly in descriptions of the boatyard…

Finkel concludes that Knight experienced regular, prolonged surges of adrenaline, a hormone meant to last short periods…

Sea lampreys are a particularly gruesome kind of parasite, latching their circle of teeth into the flesh of other fish and even humans.

Margaret Wise Brown herself is an iconic figure. Beginning in the 1930s she brought an entirely new perspective—that of the young reader or listener—to the writing and publishing of books for children. Good Night Moon—just one example among many...