#BlogTour-‘Sea Babies’ by Tracey Scott-Townsend

About The Book….

Lauren Wilson is travelling by ferry to the Outer Hebrides, about to begin a new job as a social worker. When somebody sits opposite her at the cafeteria table, she refuses to look up, annoyed at having her privacy disturbed. But a hand is pushing a mug of tea towards her, and a livid scar on the back of the hand releases a flood of memories.                                                   

Some people believe in the existence of a parallel universe. Does Lauren have a retrospective choice about the outcome of a terrible recent accident, or is it the bearer of that much older scar who has the power to decide what happens to her now?

‘Does the world have to suffer utter devastation beofre things can get better?’ Did we?

This was a really hard book to review-most people who know me would never describe me as being lost for words, but with ‘Seababies’, suddenly, I am .

The seababies relate to the story told to Lauren as a child. by her Granny, the Eleanor Farjeon tale of a Changeling baby being washed up by a storm and then retrieved by her mother . But more than this, it relates to Lauren and her journeys from the mainland of Edinburgh to Ireland, then the  Outer Hebrides from a child in the 1980’s to her as an adult, in 2016.

As a child her family was large and complex and she was told that she may not be her father’s. As a student, she lives in a squat and embarks on the love affair of her life, with Neil, a trainee doctor who is working in a pharmacy. Together they are volatile and violent but cannot bear to be apart.

Let the past go-or bring it back.

Their relationship irretrievably breaks down and Lauren moves to Iceland, gets married, gets divorced, retrains as a social worker and moves to Skye as a fresh start following a tragedy. On the ferry over, she sees a familiar hand and her re-acquaintance with Neil flashes her back to her earlier life.

The story goes back and forth between 2 times frames and I found it difficult, to start with, to follow where it was going. Lauren was both a first and third person narrator and I wasn’t sure if this was a plot device to show her looking back at her memories or whether it was the author relaying her history.

There are lots of details which are cleverly interspersed in ‘The Seababies’ which only make sense at the end-this is absolutely not a book to run through, you have to really pay attention as it is so colourful and rich you could miss vital plot points.

‘Seababies’ is about the sea, the push and pull of tides that bring things you had buried in your life back to you, as much as it takes them away. It is a novel of loss, grief and the endless possibility of hope and redemption at the end of life.

Love and death are intertwined as if there is a haunting refrain beneath the words that resembles a mother crying for her lost child, echoed in the crash of the waves, and the foam which bears the children away from her.

Lost , abandoned and unloved children as well as those who are taken, thread through this story which covers refugees and those lost at sea afte journeying towards what they hoped would be a better life.

Lauren spends her entire adult life trying to make amends for a perceived wrong from her early adulthood,only to find the potential to avoid a tragic end is never really within her grasp. However, she reaches a point which I will not spoil, where the potential to revisit and reassess the past and the present has cataclysmic results.

I defy anyone not to cry at least twice reading this beautifully poetic ode to family,motherhood, loss and belonging.

Thank you so much to Kelly of Love Books Group for having me on this blogtour.

About The Author….

Tracey is the author of ‘The Last Time We Saw Marion’, ‘‘Of His Bones’, ‘The Eliza Doll’ and ‘Another Rebecca’. Her fifth novel, ‘Sea Babies’ from Wild Pressed Books will be released on 01/05/2019 in paperback and is out in eBook format

Her 1st poetry collection,‘So Fast’ was published in January 2018.

Tracey is also a visual artist. All her work is inspired by the emotions of her own experiences and perceptions.

Tracey is the mother of four grown-up children and now spends a lot of time travelling in a small camper van with husband Phil and their rescue dogs, Pixie and Luna, gathering her thoughts and writing them down.

To buy ‘Seababies’-https://amzn.to/2S4gydb

Twitter @authortrace

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