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The Cove: A Cornish Haunting
For more than fifty years the author has been drawn back, over and again, to a rocky spot on the North Cornwall coast. Her earliest memories of the cove are bound up with idyllic family holidays; as she grows older, however, her sense of connection with the place grows deeper and more complicated. This slippery interface of land and sea - a place of sheer edges and ledges, strange rock formations and eroding, tumbling slate becomes her place of safety from childhood anxiety and, later, the terror of school bullying.
The cove draws her ineluctably. Around the time of her parents' deaths, uncanny things start to happen here. Is it the cove, or is it her? The place that she thought she knew inside out becomes strange. She discovers that her wild cove has a very populated past. A new acquaintanceship with the place begins, shared with her husband and friends, and local farmers who befriend her. But maybe the cove doesn't want to be known. And one day, in her safe recess, she will find herself in danger and come close to death.
Past presences move through these pages as they once inhabited or walked the land around the cove. There are quarrymen who reshaped the cliffs, women manning a wartime airbase up on the hill, a melancholic archaeologist digging up what he ought to leave be, a Bronze-Age woman with excellent teeth. Parents, friends. The artist JMW Turner passes through too, as do Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Anthony Trollope, and Thomas and Emma Hardy.
Set on a tiny piece of coast and unfolding through a medium of salt and slate, the elemental indifference of Atlantic Cornwall, The Cove is a lyrical meditation on being a revenant, one who returns. On change: on how we change, how places change, and how places may change us. On fear, and what happens when our fears come true, and on ways of being in danger. On mortality and on how we do or do not take leave of our dead. On haunting and being haunted: on memory, and love.
The cove draws her ineluctably. Around the time of her parents' deaths, uncanny things start to happen here. Is it the cove, or is it her? The place that she thought she knew inside out becomes strange. She discovers that her wild cove has a very populated past. A new acquaintanceship with the place begins, shared with her husband and friends, and local farmers who befriend her. But maybe the cove doesn't want to be known. And one day, in her safe recess, she will find herself in danger and come close to death.
Past presences move through these pages as they once inhabited or walked the land around the cove. There are quarrymen who reshaped the cliffs, women manning a wartime airbase up on the hill, a melancholic archaeologist digging up what he ought to leave be, a Bronze-Age woman with excellent teeth. Parents, friends. The artist JMW Turner passes through too, as do Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Anthony Trollope, and Thomas and Emma Hardy.
Set on a tiny piece of coast and unfolding through a medium of salt and slate, the elemental indifference of Atlantic Cornwall, The Cove is a lyrical meditation on being a revenant, one who returns. On change: on how we change, how places change, and how places may change us. On fear, and what happens when our fears come true, and on ways of being in danger. On mortality and on how we do or do not take leave of our dead. On haunting and being haunted: on memory, and love.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published July 4, 2024
28 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 21, 2025
4.5 ⭐️
A slightly different read for me but I really enjoyed this one. The writing is so poetic and stream-of-consciousness in a way. The book is written almost as a memoir of the authors favourite place in Cornwall, and how it became her safe place to escape to in her mind and when it called for her to visit.
This book is set into three chapters, splitting up the sections of the authors life. I specifically related to the first where she described her childhood and the feeling of missing her cove and retreating to it in her mind when she was struggling. How she had memorised the car journey and the walks along the headland and the scents and feelings of approaching the sea.
The descriptions of the coastline and the cove itself are so vivid, however they do get increasingly repetitive the further into the book you get. But I did find the authors quest to unearth as much history of the area as she could really interesting if not a little tangenty at times.
I think the marketing of this book is a little misleading. She does talk of ghosts but that and the strange coincidences that happen in the cove are by no means the main focus of the story. She talks more of herself as the ghost who returns to the cove again and again and the 50 years of memories that haunt it.
Most of my rating does go specifically to that first chapter though and the nostalgia I felt reading it.
A slightly different read for me but I really enjoyed this one. The writing is so poetic and stream-of-consciousness in a way. The book is written almost as a memoir of the authors favourite place in Cornwall, and how it became her safe place to escape to in her mind and when it called for her to visit.
This book is set into three chapters, splitting up the sections of the authors life. I specifically related to the first where she described her childhood and the feeling of missing her cove and retreating to it in her mind when she was struggling. How she had memorised the car journey and the walks along the headland and the scents and feelings of approaching the sea.
The descriptions of the coastline and the cove itself are so vivid, however they do get increasingly repetitive the further into the book you get. But I did find the authors quest to unearth as much history of the area as she could really interesting if not a little tangenty at times.
I think the marketing of this book is a little misleading. She does talk of ghosts but that and the strange coincidences that happen in the cove are by no means the main focus of the story. She talks more of herself as the ghost who returns to the cove again and again and the 50 years of memories that haunt it.
Most of my rating does go specifically to that first chapter though and the nostalgia I felt reading it.
March 16, 2025
A elegiac description of the author's favourite place in Cornwall, discovered in childhood and then revisited many times. Childhood memories of holiday activities walking and picnicking on the cliffs and in the magical cove are mixed with recollections of her now deceased parents. New memories are made with her husband and she discovers historical visitors, such as Trollope, and the histories played out in the slate quarries and defence structures of the wars. I enjoyed her lyrical descriptions of the landscape, wildlife and sea and, having similar feelings about a slightly different area of the N Cornish coast, I identified with her intense nostalgia for this personal place in her history and the memories it evokes. That said, the PR blurb about revenants and hauntings was misleading - it is no ghost story.
August 11, 2024
2.5
So disappointed.
It sounded just my sort of book but it just didn't work out for me.
I get what Lynch was trying to do. The Cove, in North Cornwall, is a place she has known all her life. Firstly with her family when she was young and they went on holiday, then sometimes on her own as she grew up, and lastly with her kind and very patient husband.
It becomes a symbol of something she once thought of as permanent, as 'solid as rock', and yet she gradually comes to realise that it is anything but.
Like life it shifts and changes and it's a tough lesson to learn that things are often not what they seem, however much we want them to be.
The main problem for me is that there wasn't enough material to sustain the book. Everything got repetitive and I got bored. I finished it but was glad to get to the end.
So disappointed.
It sounded just my sort of book but it just didn't work out for me.
I get what Lynch was trying to do. The Cove, in North Cornwall, is a place she has known all her life. Firstly with her family when she was young and they went on holiday, then sometimes on her own as she grew up, and lastly with her kind and very patient husband.
It becomes a symbol of something she once thought of as permanent, as 'solid as rock', and yet she gradually comes to realise that it is anything but.
Like life it shifts and changes and it's a tough lesson to learn that things are often not what they seem, however much we want them to be.
The main problem for me is that there wasn't enough material to sustain the book. Everything got repetitive and I got bored. I finished it but was glad to get to the end.
November 14, 2024
A courageously shared story from the author’s soul. This book has brought me peace.
August 1, 2025
This was very atmospheric and beautifully written, but frustratingly lacked a sense of purpose.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews