Book description
A book about intense physical and personal experience, narrating how Victoria Whitworth began swimming in the cold waters of Orkney as a means of escaping a failing marriage. This is a memoir of intense physical and personal experience, exploring how swimming with seals, gulls and orcas in the cold waters…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Swimming with Seals as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I live on the Atlantic in Portugal, where a member of my women’s group is Victoria Whitworth’s sister. She mentioned Swimming with Seals, when one evening, our group met for a cold water swim, the backdrop to Victoria’s unusual memoir.
Flowing from one topic to the next with the ease of the accomplished writer that she is – incorporating her Facebook posts on the weather, tides, and temperature – she chronicles her daily cold water swims off Orkney Island, her encounters with seals, orca, and birdlife, while narrating her personal story, juxtaposed with historical anecdotes, myth, and folklore.
I’m…
This is the story of a woman who is having a hard time personally, and she swims to heal herself. She swims to reconnect with her wild nature. And she is brave. She swims in all seasons, all weathers, all conditions. Once she was almost pushed against craggy rocks.
I swim too. I love seals, and know this act of taking to the water - our small bit of wild - to reconnect with my wild nature.
I loved the vulnerability that shines through in this book and I like to read of strong women who dare connect with nature…
From Janis' list on evoking the sea and shore.
If you love Swimming with Seals...
These Blue Mountains
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
Want books like Swimming with Seals?
Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 90 books like Swimming with Seals.
Share your top 3 reads of 2025!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,340
readers submitted
so far, will you?
📚 If you like Swimming with Seals, you might also like...
Foxfire in the Snow
It's a time of change, between magic and alchemy.
Born the heir of a master woodcutter in a queendom defined by guilds and matrilineal inheritance, nonbinary Sorin can’t quite seem to find their place. At seventeen, an opportunity to attend an alchemical guild fair and secure an apprenticeship with the…
The Main Gate
Dr. Elise Marquette has spent years burying the past—until the past refuses to stay buried.
Hired to join Earth’s first interstellar contact team, she hopes the vastness of space will finally offer distance from the ghosts of war and the wounds left by a mother who never let her be…
