What Did the Deep Sea Say?

Brought to you by Penguin.

A stunning meditation on how the physical world can bring us back to earth from the edge of grief

In the aftermath of catastrophic loss, a mother and her young son cross the Atlantic, taking refuge in a wooden house on a remote strip of land. Viewed from the shore, where land meets sea, the horizon is a line that holds their attention and draws them in. Camera in hand, she charts their progress and starts to imagine new ways of being and a new existence for her small family.

Writing with precision and clarity, Coutts combines the real with the fictional, thinking through art, poetry, geology, maps and Minecraft to present a devastating and fierce reflection on intimacy and separation, the visible and the invisible and the fragility and strangeness of the ocean and its borders.

'A miracle of a book' CELIA PAUL

© Marion Coutts 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026