Psychological Thriller set on the EAST COAST of ENGLAND
13 collected short stories set on islands around the WORLD
18th November 2025
Over The Water: Essays on Islands.
Published by Daunt Originals
13 collected short stories set on islands across the world
The latest in a series that includes In the Garden, At the Pond, By The River and more
Contributors:
Anthony Anaxagorou | Santanu Bhattacharya | Octavia Bright | Nicola Dinan | Ella Frears | Sinéad Gleeson | Noreen Masud | Orlaine McDonald | Megan Nolan | K Patrick | Cecile Pin | Alexandra Pringle | Ralf Webb
Thirteen essays to “transport you to shores far and near“. In the first story author Alexandra Pringle describes a year in her life when she was teaching in Italy. She and Paco take a trip to Isola S Pietro, a small island off the coast of Sardinia. These are carefree days, the weather and the delights of ‘just being’. In the next story the Isle of Lewis is beautifully described, where the author feels “subsumed by nature” and how the perpetual wind in the Winter months served to take over human life, especially someone who is trying to hide whilst processing the sense of self.
Noreen Masud was paid to fly to Tasmania (the “little snip off the edge of Australia“), the home of the duck-billed platypus but it is extraordinarily rare to spot one. However, her luck is in and is over the moon at being so privileged to see one.
Did you know that the Isola d’Elba looks like a child’s drawing of a fish? Spending time on this island offers a period of reflection by author Octavia Bright. A particularly pensive author, Cecile Pin, ponders her time in Phuket, starkly underscored by her reading around the terrible crimes perpetrated on women of her heritage on a different Thai island, Koh Kra. Curiously the reader discovers that Glastonbury Tor is actually an island in Somerset, which is featured in “Leaving Avalon”.
The stories include themes of emigration/immigration, assimilation and the notion of home. The changes and impositions made by colonialists, the choosing of island setting for an author’s novel; and what it means to be “born of” an island. Manhattan features in the final story and in contrast to others is, of course, a very city centric story about a relationship, written by Megan Nolan, whose novel Acts of Desperation appealed to me when it first came out. You can read my review here.
This is such an interesting and eclectic mix of islands, the geography, peoples and cultures, seen
through personal lenses of the authors. There is certainly learning to be had amongst these well-written and beautifully penned stories.
Tina for the TripFiction Team
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