Industries
![Tabitha Lasley - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_tabitha_lasley.jpg)
Sea State: A Memoir
A Recommended Read from: Vogue * USA Today * The Los Angeles Times * Publishers Weekly * The Week * Alma * Lit Hub
A stunning and brutally honest memoir that shines a light on what happens when female desire conflicts with a culture of masculinity in crisis
In her midthirties and newly free from a terrible relationship, Tabitha Lasley quit her job at a London magazine, packed her bags, and poured her savings into a six-month lease on an apartment in Aberdeen, Scotland. She decided to make good on a long-deferred idea for a book about oil rigs and the men who work on them. Why oil rigs? She wanted to see what men were like with no women around.
In Aberdeen, Tabitha became deeply entrenched in the world of roughnecks, a teeming subculture rich with brawls, hard labor, and competition. The longer she stayed, the more she found her presence had a destabilizing effect on the men-and her.
Sea State is on the one hand a portrait of an overlooked industry: "offshore" is a way of life for generations of primarily working-class men and also a potent metaphor for those parts of life we keep at bay-class, masculinity, the transactions of desire, and the awful slipperiness of a ladder that could, if we tried hard enough, lead us to security.
Sea State is on the other hand the story of a journalist whose professional distance from her subject becomes perilously thin. In Aberdeen, Tabitha gets high and dances with abandon, reliving her youth, when the music was good and the boys were bad. Twenty years on, there is Caden: a married rig worker who spends three weeks on and three weeks off. Alone and in an increasingly precarious state, Tabitha dives into their growing attraction. The relationship, reckless and explosive, will lay them both bare.
A stunning and brutally honest memoir that shines a light on what happens when female desire conflicts with a culture of masculinity in crisis
In her midthirties and newly free from a terrible relationship, Tabitha Lasley quit her job at a London magazine, packed her bags, and poured her savings into a six-month lease on an apartment in Aberdeen, Scotland. She decided to make good on a long-deferred idea for a book about oil rigs and the men who work on them. Why oil rigs? She wanted to see what men were like with no women around.
In Aberdeen, Tabitha became deeply entrenched in the world of roughnecks, a teeming subculture rich with brawls, hard labor, and competition. The longer she stayed, the more she found her presence had a destabilizing effect on the men-and her.
Sea State is on the one hand a portrait of an overlooked industry: "offshore" is a way of life for generations of primarily working-class men and also a potent metaphor for those parts of life we keep at bay-class, masculinity, the transactions of desire, and the awful slipperiness of a ladder that could, if we tried hard enough, lead us to security.
Sea State is on the other hand the story of a journalist whose professional distance from her subject becomes perilously thin. In Aberdeen, Tabitha gets high and dances with abandon, reliving her youth, when the music was good and the boys were bad. Twenty years on, there is Caden: a married rig worker who spends three weeks on and three weeks off. Alone and in an increasingly precarious state, Tabitha dives into their growing attraction. The relationship, reckless and explosive, will lay them both bare.
Editorial Reviews
"Lasley is a gifted interlocutor.... The book's hybrid of ethnography, journalism and disclosure might have been disastrous in the hands of someone without Lasley's candor and style. Instead, "Sea State" accomplishes what many memoirs do not: It organizes a messy life with a clear vision." - New York Times Book Review
"A singular and refreshingly candid travel memoir." - Los Angeles Times
"A peculiar and entrancing blend of memoir and reportage…. Smart about sexual desire and the ease of analyzing - but the difficulty of escaping - familiar gender roles, Sea State offers a close up view of the white, working-class resentments that helped fuel both Brexit and the Trump presidency." - Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
"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
"A sharp take on masculinity, class and the intoxicating danger of attraction." - People
"The hybrid work of memoir and unconventional journalism chronicles Lasley's doomed romance with Caden alongside a consideration of the dangers of a life of oil extraction. Along the way, she learns not to trust her assumptions about men like Caden, places like Aberdeen, and women like herself." - The Atlantic
"Sea State is so many things at once: an exploration of class, masculinity, desire, and the ways in which the work we do defines us. But alongside these huge subjects, it's quite simply the story of a young woman who is lonely and finds herself in close proximity to a lot of lonely men. I was so impressed by how deftly Tabitha Lasley moves between the personal and the academic, and how much authority she maintains throughout. This is a truly powerful memoir." - Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes
"Sea State is, itself, a hybrid of sorts: an investigation that is also a confession but reads a lot like a novel. It is a startlingly original study of love, masculinity and the cost of a profession that few outside of it can truly understand. The cost to Lasley herself is yet to be revealed." - The Guardian
"Lasley has written a uniqu...
"A singular and refreshingly candid travel memoir." - Los Angeles Times
"A peculiar and entrancing blend of memoir and reportage…. Smart about sexual desire and the ease of analyzing - but the difficulty of escaping - familiar gender roles, Sea State offers a close up view of the white, working-class resentments that helped fuel both Brexit and the Trump presidency." - Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
"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
"A sharp take on masculinity, class and the intoxicating danger of attraction." - People
"The hybrid work of memoir and unconventional journalism chronicles Lasley's doomed romance with Caden alongside a consideration of the dangers of a life of oil extraction. Along the way, she learns not to trust her assumptions about men like Caden, places like Aberdeen, and women like herself." - The Atlantic
"Sea State is so many things at once: an exploration of class, masculinity, desire, and the ways in which the work we do defines us. But alongside these huge subjects, it's quite simply the story of a young woman who is lonely and finds herself in close proximity to a lot of lonely men. I was so impressed by how deftly Tabitha Lasley moves between the personal and the academic, and how much authority she maintains throughout. This is a truly powerful memoir." - Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes
"Sea State is, itself, a hybrid of sorts: an investigation that is also a confession but reads a lot like a novel. It is a startlingly original study of love, masculinity and the cost of a profession that few outside of it can truly understand. The cost to Lasley herself is yet to be revealed." - The Guardian
"Lasley has written a uniqu...
Readers Top Reviews
kathleen gToneLaHeyD
Yes the writing is wonderful but halfway through I'd had enough of Lasley who I wanted to tell to just grow up. This isn't a story about the men who work on the offshore oil rigs, although they loom large and I learned a lot. It's the story of Lasley's failed relationship with one of them and how she spun out during a 6 month stint in Aberdeen when she was meant to be writing a book. No moral judgment on her affair with Caden but it became increasingly clear to me that this wasn't a grand romance between people who are different in so many ways (particularly revealing, I think was that she kept and laid out the list of what he would eat.). There's excessive alcohol use, drug use, and so on. Points to Lasley to laying herself bare for this but that may not be a positive. Thanks to edelweiss for the ARC. I'm not sure why she irritated me so much but she sure did.
T.O.C.
I enjoyed how succinctly the author portrayed a variety of interviews. I love how honest she was about her own failings. I appreciate the several aspects discussed….safety issues on the rigs, the disjointed lifestyle of the workers, cultural pressure on young poor men from industrialized towns, the shabby role and treatment of women by this culture. I will recommend this book to my book club.
bill FloridaJames B
why she quite her day job to write is a mystery to me. A disjointed life without any direction. Too bad the return window closed before I attempted to read her book Bill Florida
a Hyatt2 Shay
Could not finish this book, it was dull. This person has not lived a life worth writing about. I really dont care about a persons sex life. I thought this book would have an indepth look at life on an English rig, but alas, it hardly touches on it. This one just went straight to good will.
I came for the oil workers, but stayed for the writers memoir. Not at all what I excpected, but better. Damn good, jus read it will you?
