The Cove: A Cornish Haunting

Beth Lynch has been drawn back to a rocky spot on the North Cornwall coast for over five decades, finding it a place of safety from childhood anxiety and school bullying. As she grows older, she becomes more connected to the place and uncanny things start to happen. The Cove is a lyrical meditation on being a revenant, on haunting and being haunted, exploring the profound impacts of change and the transformative dance between the two.

Format: Hardback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 04 July 2024
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co

Beth Lynch has been drawn back to a rocky spot on the North Cornwall coast for over five decades, and her sense of connection with the place grows deeper and more complicated as she grows older. The cove is a place of sheer edges and ledges, strange rock formations, and eroding, tumbling slate, which becomes her place of safety from childhood anxiety and school bullying. Around the time of her parents' deaths, uncanny things start to happen in and around the cove, and Lynch is left wondering how well she really knows this place that draws her so ineluctably. Is it the cove, or is it her? What secrets does the cove have to share? Is she safer staying away?

Set on a minute section of coast and unfolding through a medium of salt and slate, The Cove is a lyrical meditation on being a revenant, on haunting and being haunted. Through encounters with quarrymen, wartime women, and an enigmatic archaeologist, along with JMW Turner, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Anthony Trollope, and Thomas and Emma Hardy, Lynch contemplates what happens when our deepest fears materialize, reflecting on mortality and the nuanced ways in which we take leave of our dead. She explores the profound impacts of change - in ourselves, in places, and in the transformative dance between the two.

Weight: 352g
Dimension: 143 x 226 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781474606936