[sun surfer]

I nominate-


The Sea, the Sea by Irish Murdoch, 1978, Ireland & the U.K., Goodreads

I think this one fits the topic of new beginnings as the main character retires from London to an isolated house by the sea, and the title refers to (uncharted) waters. It won the Man Booker in 1978.

Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor both professionally and personally, and to amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors--some real, some spectral--that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core.

In exposing the jumble of motivations that drive Arrowby and the other characters, Iris Murdoch lays bare "the truth of untruth"--the human vanity, jealousy, and lack of compassion behind the disguises they present to the world. Played out against a vividly rendered landscape and filled with allusions to myth and magic, Charles's confrontation with the tidal rips of love and forgiveness is one of Murdoch's most moving and powerful tales.

The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara, 2013, the U.S., Goodreads

I think this fits the topic by of uncharted waters by being about an expedition to a remote Micronesian island looking for a rumoured lost tribe.

In 1950, a young doctor called Norton Perina signs on with the anthropologist Paul Tallent for an expedition to the remote Micronesian island of Ivu'ivu in search of a rumored lost tribe. They succeed, finding not only that tribe but also a group of forest dwellers they dub "The Dreamers," who turn out to be fantastically long-lived but progressively more senile. Perina suspects the source of their longevity is a hard-to-find turtle; unable to resist the possibility of eternal life, he kills one and smuggles some meat back to the States. He scientifically proves his thesis, earning worldwide fame and the Nobel Prize, but he soon discovers that its miraculous property comes at a terrible price. As things quickly spiral out of his control, his own demons take hold, with devastating personal consequences.

Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson, 1904, Argentina & the U.K., Goodreads

I had mentioned the club hopefully veering into a slightly more recent and less obscure direction, and here I'm nominating an old, obscure book. In my defence though it was a bestseller in the early part of the 20th century, and it fits the topics of new beginnings and uncharted waters, being about the protagonist taking refuge from a failed revolutionary attempt in the primeval forests(/jungles?) of southwestern Venezuela.

A failed revolutionary attempt drives the hero of Hudson's novel to seek refuge in the primeval forests of south-western Venezuela. There, in the 'green mansions' of the title, Abel encounters the wood-nymph Rima, the last survivor of a mysterious aboriginal race. The love that flowers between them is soon overshadowed by cruelty and sorrow... One of the acknowledged masters of natural history writing, W. H. Hudson forms an important link between nineteenth-century Romanticism and the twentieth-century ecological movement.

First published in 1904 and a bestseller after its reissue a dozen years later, Green Mansions offers its readers a poignant meditation on the loss of wilderness, the dream of a return to nature, and the bitter reality of the encounter between savage and civilized man.