The Half Bird by Susan Smillie review – a life less ordinary

How the author swapped journalism for the freedom, adventure and terror of life on the ocean

Radical changes of direction seem to require a great deal of drama, at least in the recounting: a decisive moment, a flight from unhappiness, a marshalling of immense internal reserves. In truth, they are often more gently underdetermined than that, as is Susan Smillie’s absorbing account of her life at sea in her boat Isean. There were catalysts – the mutation of a long-term romantic relationship into a deep friendship, the sense of fracturing and fractiousness that beset the UK after the referendum in 2016 – but there was also a more gradual realignment of priorities, a slow realisation that there may be a different and more generative way to live.

Maybe it started when Smillie rescued Isean from a boatyard in the west of Scotland, the vessel’s graceful lines blinding her to the thousands of pounds that would be needed for restoration. Before long, pottering up and down the Sussex coast didn’t seem enough, and Smillie set herself the challenge of gaining the knowledge and expertise necessary for longer, more complicated trips. At the same time, as she progressed through her 40s, with a good and long-worked-for job as an editor at the Guardian, she came to appreciate that it’s quite possible to outgrow one’s dreams. A course correction was needed.

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