To me, the book was about women. About the sorts of cultures you can get into or opt of out; the cultures of baby showers, dressing up for the races and constant self advertising. It was about Lasley herself, about the moments of varying degrees that turn us into the people that we are and lead us to accept any kinds of shit that are thrown at us. It is about all the women marketed 'like Camargue horses' with no prospects who will fight tooth and nail for a man who has no respect for them or for any women at all. It is about giving your daughter a posh name to give her chances. It is about not having your friends around. A debut from a former journalist who writes with poetic precision. The book couples keen observational journalistic skills (including transcripts from interviews) with lucid prose, so exact, the words are so carefully placed.

I know another writer, Owen, who is also an alumnus of the night-time economy. I ask if he ever took cocaine on the job. He took it on every job, he says. As a pot washer at a chain hotel. A barman at a Toby Carvery. A cashier at an all-night garage. Here however I found the style to be quite personal and, for the most part, very compelling. I grew up reading women's magazines and newspaper columns written by or for women, and this seems very familiar. The closest comparison I can make is with Liz Jones, the Mail on Sunday's weekly columnist who journals her life through the prism of her relationship problems. The book is also fairly short - combined with the punchy style, it makes for an easy, satisfying read. In that sense, I think it's succesful -the tendency of the author to digress did get a bit much for me though. The vocabulary is also fairly complex and seems just a bit engineered to convey the impression that the author is very intelligent (as compared to the rough beasts on the rig, see below). I got through over half the book in a single sitting. Andrew O’Hagan writes that, in the opinion of a high-up at British Rail, the ‘most frightening journey in the UK’ is, or was, Aberdeen to Glasgow on a Friday night, via Dundee ( LRB, 21 January). In my opinion, the honours should go to the last train from Newcastle to Darlington on a Saturday night. A few years ago, in a bid to reduce the intensity of the experience for all concerned, it was decided that the last train should leave Newcastle before 10.30 p.m. – but this had a concertina effect on the drinking of out-of-towners, encouraging everyone to hang on until the last possible moment before crushing into the carriages all at once. The results were frequently spectacular. O’Hagan describes how Tabitha Lasley became friendly with a man who got on her train at Darlington, before discovering that he had murdered somebody. I’ve never met a murderer at Darlington Station, though I did once get a lift home from a convicted one. (I don’t think he had ever worked on an oil rig.) But I don’t want to put anyone off. Darlington has a very nice station, worth braving the journey from Newcastle for – it won Large Station of the Year in 2005.

I ask my friend Connor if he remembers this; he’s worked offshore for 20 years. I met Connor in a bar when I was in my 20s; he sat down next to me and asked if I wanted to come to his friend’s house to take cocaine. He’s since cut it out, because he’s in his 40s, has children and worries about his heart. At the time, his habit was curtailed only by his work schedule. Sea State marks the arrival of a gifted and exciting new voice’ Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13 SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE PORTICO PRIZE A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2021 ‘It’s extraordinary. It takes you places so few books do’ Observer ‘Acidic, addictive reporting with a fictional veneer. A candid examination of the life of North Sea oil riggers, and an explosive portrayal of masculinity, loneliness and female desire.

While the alleged focus of the book drew me in, the final product ultimately left me frustrated and annoyed. This book is not what it seems to be, barely giving readers much of anything about these men and what it’s like to work at sea drilling for oil. Really, this is a memoir about an affair and a woman who is thinking about writing a book of substance but never actually does. Daily, I drilled him on the worst-case scenario. Wipe your texts every time we talk. Leave your phone out where she can see it. No new clothes to go offshore, no smashing the gym before you leave. And if she does catch you, please don’t say it was just sex. But equally, don’t tell her I was special. She will ask if I’m prettier than her, if I’m younger than her, if I let you do the things to me she won’t let you do to her.One star deducted for the rather odd ending chapters where she loses direction somewhat. She should have ended at Aberdeen airport. A stunning and brutally honest memoir that shines a light on what happens when female desire conflicts with a culture of masculinity in crisis 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 For me, the best part is Chapter 4, like a song with an extraordinary bridge, the middle part of the book absolutely sang. The writing about drug taking was glorious and the way it fitted in with a few perfectly pitched paragraphs about the scope of the city and it's vicinity to the Arctic Circle. A minor niggle, but none of the women in this book were portrayed in a sympathetic manner, which bothered me as well.

Lasley supposedly interviewed more than 100 men for this book, though you would hardly know that from reading it. That's because this book isn’t about masculinity and men, it’s about her and how she dealt with a failed relationship by dancing, drinking, doing drugsand occasionally listening to some men talk about their work in the most superficial of terms. Lasley is a good writer, which is perhaps why this bait-and-switch feels particularly frustrating. 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 On a train she meets a boxer-turned-rigger who worked on platforms in Saudi Arabia and the Falklands before moving to Piper Bravo in the North Sea. He says he gets scared lying in his bunk bed. “When they bring the [oil] containers on board at night, and you hear them: boom! You’re working on a floating bomb. A floating bomb that’s just waiting for an ignition source.” Later, after a few drinks, he tells her he once killed a man. She’s not sure whether to believe him but still lets him walk her home. Sea State is a hybrid of sorts: an investigation that is also a confession but reads a lot like a novel The affair with Caden may consume most of the narrative of Sea State, but Lasley continues to work on the book that she set out to write, inducing riggers into conversation at hotel bars and strip clubs across Aberdeen. The memoir that she has actually published contains the ghostly imprint of this other book, the one that almost was. Anonymous quotes from Lasley’s interviewees appear at the start of each chapter. A few read almost like punchlines: Lasley fends off a lot of propositions and hears a lot of vivid stories, many of them about accidents and the lax safety protection for workers offshore. Not only is the oil rig itself "a pressure cooker," one worker tells Lasley, but "the human element felt explosive. A hundred men of varying temperaments, trapped together in a steel box, miles from land, from any sign of civilization."

She soon finds out what she is like with no one else around, save for itinerant men who spend half their lives stranded in the middle of the sea. and, above all, female desire" - sometimes the author does speak about this generally, however everything is so personal and filled with self criticism, insight and analysis about how it relates to her (and not to class or society in general) I don't think much is generally applicable. There's quite a lot of sex in this short book too, and, surprisingly, it's fairly sensitively written, with a little modern vulgarity added in. Covertly, I scanned the congregation for my boyfriend. I had asked my sister to make him an usher, to compensate for the fact that my ex had been invited to the wedding. It hadn’t worked; he was still angry. He rarely lost his temper in public, but I knew the signs a tantrum was in the post: compression around his temples, a muscle going in his jaw. There was no statutory limit on how long he might nurse this particular grievance. But sooner or later, the bill would come in.