In 2022, Christina Riley became an ‘underwater writer in residence’ at Argyle Coast Hope Spot on the west coast of Scotland. The Hope Spots are a worldwide collection of scientifically identified underwater areas that are critical to ocean health and protected under a global conservation campaign.
This was a perfect job for Riley, who for the last few years has also been running The Nature Library, a wonderful scheme that collects books that connect people to their landscapes.
Looking Down at the Stars is a sumptuous and beautiful collection of essays, mixing personal experience with wonderful nature writing, drawing on wider themes of conservation and climate into the bargain.
Riley spent her days submerged in the ocean, emerging to reflect on how transformative the experience was. She has a brilliant eye for detail and her writing on a whole host of creatures she saw underwater is a joy to read, from more familiar scallops and mussels to utterly delightful nudibranchs and something called a plumose anemone.
The nature writing is flanked by longer essays that give a wider context to the whole project, and Riley argues beautifully that a change of perspective such as she underwent would have a dramatic social effect if it could be repeated in more widespread fashion. Everything from philosophy and human exceptionalism to climate change and geopolitics is examined as closely as the bioluminescence of a sea squirt in this book, which will absolutely rewire the reader’s brain in the best possible way.
Looking Down at the Starsby Christina Riley is out now (Saraband, £12.99).You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.
