This debut novel by Madeline Tobert is about a remote island surrounded by sea and its inhabitants. The sea is so important to the story that the rythm of the writing has a rise and fall like the flow of the tide and the breaking of the waves. The Sea on our skin is about contrasts: sunshine and rain, traditional island life and the modern world, sadness and happiness, violence and gentleness, the ordinary and the unnnatural, suffering and joy and lots of pain and love.
Following three generations of the Matete family, this is haunting storytelling that left me thinking about the people involved long after I had turned the last page.
