The Sea Bed

The Sea Bed

A beautifully observed and understated novel of desire, duty and, above all, secrets

When a young Buddhist monk leaves the safe predictability of his mountain monastery and ventures into the world to carry out a fellow monk's dying request, he finds himself unprepared for the world that meets him.

Elsewhere, in an inner city bar, a young girls sits alone watching office men grow increasingly drunk as she contemplates which such man to take back to a hotel with her.

While, in a far off remote coastal village, a young diver is witnessing the extinction of a way of life that has been family's for generations.

Isolated yet connected, the lives of each of Marele Day's exquisitely-drawn characters intersect in surprising ways in her long-awaited new novel, The Sea Bed. What is meaning behind the burial cloth the Monk carries, with its star and cross-hatching motif? What is preventing Lilly from returning to the island, and to her family, after all these years>? And what is the secret that haunts Chicken's family tree?

Based on the author's two month Asialink residency in Japan research Japanese diving women, or ama, The Sea Bed is an illuminating story of love, family and change that has at its heart the story of an ancient Japanese community.

Marele Day four book Claudia Valentine series has become a minor classic in Australian crime writing, but her Lambs of God (1998) was even more highly acclaimed as an original and provocative literary work, published in the US by Riverhead and in the UK by Sceptre. Her most recent novel was Mrs Cook, a rich portray of the life of a woman whose passion and intellect matched that of her celebrated husband.

The Sea Bed
Allen and Unwin
Author: Marele Day
Price: $27.99