The Lonley Sea

The Lonely Sea – Alistair McLean

‘The Lonely Sea’ is a collection of all the short stories written by Alistair McLean over his entire career, starting with his first story ‘The Dileas’, that launched his career as a writer. The stories encompass a wide range of plots; the common thread, as the name suggests, being a connection with the sea, in one form or other. He has an unmatched gift in writing about sea, and I think it would be his career in the Royal Navy during the war, that armed him with this skill.

Nearly half of the stories in this collection are non-fictional accounts of wartime encounters – tales of heroism, sacrifice, bravery, as well as of tragedy, and bureaucratic  blunders. The stories are extremely well written, vivid, and engaging. Unfortunately, I didn’t like these so much, because after a point they started having a lot of similarity, but more so, because they are invariably gory, depicting massive destruction, tragedy and loss. Such stories leave me quite sad, and disenchanted with humankind.

The others are fictional, with quite a variety in theme and tone, some of them are light-hearted, and some serious. These, I loved. Most of these have a twist in the end, very like O. Henry (another author I love!).

The edition I have also includes a newspaper article by McLean, titled “The Rewards and Responsibilities of success”, an interesting read. The highlight of the article would be an honest opinion of himself as a writer – he admits to no literary pretence (let alone greatness), but his purpose to entertain the readers. Or, as we can put it, to give everyone (the publisher and the readers) a worth for their money.