the netherlands has been the home of irishman charlie jermyn for the last 5 years; it’s a nation that has been dredged up from the water and which attempts, to this day, to hold back the persistent tide. after moving to the netherlands in his early twenties, charlie found himself adopting a similar approach in his writing as he attempted to understand the country and his own place in it. divided into three parts, this book explores how he submerged himself in the culture through its art history, eccentricities and ordinariness and built a home from the reclaimed sand. the tides of time draw ever closer, threatening to sweep away the present. Instead of waiting for it to wash in, charlie ventures off the beaten track and observes the world around him ever more keenly, with a boundless enthusiasm for the all-too-often overlooked. in his brilliant and very-hard-to-describe debut novel, jermyn brings the common and absurd to crisp, shimmering life through his essays and short non-fiction pieces, reminding us to take note of the mad and brilliant world around us before the tide comes in again.
