Review: Saltwater Series #01: Mine

“The day the Brazilians boys were murdered, the surf was so good it’s impossible to do it justice in writing.” The plot clues crammed into that opening sentence set Mine up as a mystery with a twist – its protagonist is not a detective but a surfer who’s obsessive about the water and the waves. We’re about to go on one hell of a ride.

Jimmy has a lot going on. His mother is crippled from years of domestic abuse and his girlfriend has hooked up with his best mate. Turning to alcohol for the comfort of oblivion, he looks in the mirror and finds his father, the man he found dead as a teenager, and whose body he left in the shed as, freed from his reign of terror, he headed out to catch the surf.

Surfing is the predominant passion of the story. The descriptions of massive swells, mushy, slow rolling waves and ‘gin clear’ water are beautiful, making the reader long to be out there with Jimmy:

“Each wave, darkened by the sheer volume of water it contained, suddenly glowed like a jewel as it thinned and reared and toppled, backlit by the rising sun.”

But Jimmy, in his mid-twenties at the height of the story, is thwarted by overcrowded Australian seas filled with idiots dropping in on his waves. To sort his head out, he has to escape so uses an inheritance to avoid the increasingly desperate texts from his ex, and heads to Bali, then Indonesia.

No improvement – the streets and the seas are heaving with party people, tourists hurling their privilege and disrespect at communities reliant on them. Jimmy hires a local to take him to quieter climes and he finds himself, after much surf action, drama and trauma, on North Sentinel Island. This is the place where, in real life 2018, a young missionary was killed by the reclusive islanders after he travelled there illegally.

The author throws Jimmy into a situation that no one has ever reported back on. There is drone footage of the island, distant photographs, but little information as to how the Sentinelese live or even how many tribespeople there are. The fictional depiction of the island has Jimmy in a precarious position, danger around him at all times.

It’s a fascinating look at how an outsider, with vastly different lived experience, can intrude upon and unwittingly corrupt systems that have been in place for hundreds or thousands of years. Jimmy, to his credit, is keenly aware of this. His adventure, and his path to self-realisation, give depth to the novel as he makes decisions that illustrate the growth of his character.

The first person narrative utilises a mix of young, angry surf dude swearing at the world and its idiots and a calmer Jimmy, one who observes the world in detail: the fly on the lip of his dead father, blood warm water, the joyful face of a first time surfer. Our mind’s eye is able to picture North Sentinel Island, hear and see its inhabitants, feel Jimmy’s fear and awe. His interactions with the islanders are full of confusion, dawning realisation, the clash of two wildly divergent cultures. It’s fascinating and thought provoking.

Surfers and lovers of the water will lap up Mine, reveling in the detailed descriptions of the sea and its wildly varying conditions, and probably jealous of the fictitious (as far as we know) perfection of riding the Sentinelese waves without another soul in sight. In the current zero travel situation, a vicarious trip to the Bay of Bengal could be just the ticket.

Reviewed by Louise Ward