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The Visitor
It is 1880 in Cornwall. Pearl, Nicholas, and Jack play among the fishing boats of Skommow Bay, not understanding the undercurrents beneath their games. Nine years later, Nicholas, keen for the fishing industry and society as a whole to progress, makes a decision that will affect all of their lives forever. Told from the point of a view of an aging Pearl, succumbing to dementia in 1936, this moving novel jumps back and forth through time as Pearl’s own memory does and explores topics such as the tension between individual will and the pressure to conform to societal norms, love and tragedy, and the ripple effects of a dying industry. The story is set against the scenic backdrop of Cornwall as well as the late-19th-century riots over the observance of the Sabbath in the fishing industry, and serves as a tremendously accurate snapshot of a particular moment in time and a meditation on the universal themes of love and loss.
357 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 29, 2013
About the author
Katherine Stansfield
15 books60 followersKatherine Stansfield is a multi-genre novelist and poet who grew up on Bodmin Moor and now lives in Cardiff.
Her Cornish Mysteries crime series is set in the 1840s and features unorthodox detective duo Anna Drake and Shilly Williams. The pair investigate crimes based on real events in Cornish history and involve a good dash of local folklore. Think 'Sherlock Holmes meets the X Files meets Daphne du Maurier'.
Katherine is also one half of the writing partnership DK Fields, with her partner David Towsey. Head of Zeus will publish their political fantasy novel Widow’s Welcome, the first in The Tales of Fenest trilogy, in August 2019.
You can find Katherine on Twitter, @K_Stansfield, and keep up to date with events and new interviews via her website: http://katherinestansfield.blogspot.c...
Her Cornish Mysteries crime series is set in the 1840s and features unorthodox detective duo Anna Drake and Shilly Williams. The pair investigate crimes based on real events in Cornish history and involve a good dash of local folklore. Think 'Sherlock Holmes meets the X Files meets Daphne du Maurier'.
Katherine is also one half of the writing partnership DK Fields, with her partner David Towsey. Head of Zeus will publish their political fantasy novel Widow’s Welcome, the first in The Tales of Fenest trilogy, in August 2019.
You can find Katherine on Twitter, @K_Stansfield, and keep up to date with events and new interviews via her website: http://katherinestansfield.blogspot.c...
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 28, 2013
The Visitor tells the story of Pearl, a lifetime resident of a Cornish fishing village. Katherine Stansfield intercuts between Pearl's youth and later life to illustrate changes to the environment, as well as Pearl's altered circumstances. While the story of Pearl's love for Nicholas is central, it is the village that emerges as the main character. The sea and shoals of fish are anthropomorphised and rituals related to the fishing industry are minutely described. The structure of the novel is strong, too - the technique of flashing between time periods reflects Pearl's dementia as well as serving to withhold clues related to the romantic plot. It's a terrific novel.
March 28, 2021
I was gifted this book back in 2013 in St Breward Village Hall, just before I started my degree in Literature and Creative Writing. I am glad I've read if now, a year after completing my MA, living away from Cornwall, as the themes and writing style wouldn't have connected as much as they did.
The poignancy and feeling of loss builds through the text to the point that by the end I wanted to look away but couldn't. I may be able to write something longer once I have finished processing.
The poignancy and feeling of loss builds through the text to the point that by the end I wanted to look away but couldn't. I may be able to write something longer once I have finished processing.
May 3, 2019
It started good,but later on turned boring.
January 20, 2023
4.75*
Wow, this one was a surprise. This is a very small story grandly told. I did not know when I started exactly what I would get myself into, but by the end I was blown away by this incredibly written novel.
If I had known what it was about exactly, I am not sure whether I would have read this. It deals with dementia from the perspective of the person affected by it and I am not sure I have read that before quite like this. You feel the confusion, or sometimes the non-confusion, the belief in what our main character Pearl is experiencing.
The setting in a small fishing village in Cornwell was beautifully described and you could feel it brimming with life and then the fear and despair of the people when the fish no longer come. Incredibly well done.
Although I loved the writing style from the start I was unsure whether it would be for me for a good while. The further I got into the story, the more I felt invested in Pearl’s wellbeing. The dual timeline worked beautifully. There is a bit of a mystery going on and I kind of loved the way that the story handled the solution and counted on the reader to solve it.
I kept it dry right until the last page and I can only say that this is a great story, even if I would not have thought it was my kind of read. I am so glad I read it!
Wow, this one was a surprise. This is a very small story grandly told. I did not know when I started exactly what I would get myself into, but by the end I was blown away by this incredibly written novel.
If I had known what it was about exactly, I am not sure whether I would have read this. It deals with dementia from the perspective of the person affected by it and I am not sure I have read that before quite like this. You feel the confusion, or sometimes the non-confusion, the belief in what our main character Pearl is experiencing.
The setting in a small fishing village in Cornwell was beautifully described and you could feel it brimming with life and then the fear and despair of the people when the fish no longer come. Incredibly well done.
Although I loved the writing style from the start I was unsure whether it would be for me for a good while. The further I got into the story, the more I felt invested in Pearl’s wellbeing. The dual timeline worked beautifully. There is a bit of a mystery going on and I kind of loved the way that the story handled the solution and counted on the reader to solve it.
I kept it dry right until the last page and I can only say that this is a great story, even if I would not have thought it was my kind of read. I am so glad I read it!
January 21, 2023
Dark, sombre and authentic, this book doesn’t pull any punches as we focus on Pearl and her dementia as she drifts between the past and the present and tends to get lost in both. Beautifully written it creates two time zones that are no longer and does this so well they remain with you long after the novel is over. Having cared for my mother, who had Alzheimers, it was a difficult read for me but captured the condition so well I found it very moving.
May 12, 2015
The Visitor, by Katherine Stansfield is written with an aching poignancy and vivid, intense descriptive powers. Set between the 1880s and the mid 1930s, it brilliantly contrasts its protagonist, Pearl, as a child, a young woman and an old woman on the verge of being sucked under by dementia, which allows Stansfield to withhold essential facts until she’s ready to allow us to piece the clues together. The past is now clearer to Pearl than the present, demonstrated by Stansfield through her clever structural weaving of past and present.
Stansfield now lives in Wales, but spent her childhood in Cornwall, and a major character in the story is the beautifully described Cornish fishing village of Morlanow, where in the last century, huge shoals of pilchards made some people rich, while others are lost at sea. Now, between the two world wars, the shoals have gone and the village is preparing to look to tourism and holidaymakers for an income.
Pearl has lived there in Morlanow all her life, and her love of swimming, which she still sneaks away to do in her nightie, comes across as her enduring pleasure. Slowly, thought memory and the troubled times of her present life, it emerges that Pearl ‘lost’ her first and only love, and has lived through an unhappy marriage with Jack, hoping that her Nicholas will return. Now, she is certain that he will. She see the signs everywhere.
This is a slender book, which does not take long to move through, but did leave me with a lot to think about. The blending of a demented woman’s dream-world and the blunt truth about life around the turn of the last century is beautifully realized.
Nina Milton
Stansfield now lives in Wales, but spent her childhood in Cornwall, and a major character in the story is the beautifully described Cornish fishing village of Morlanow, where in the last century, huge shoals of pilchards made some people rich, while others are lost at sea. Now, between the two world wars, the shoals have gone and the village is preparing to look to tourism and holidaymakers for an income.
Pearl has lived there in Morlanow all her life, and her love of swimming, which she still sneaks away to do in her nightie, comes across as her enduring pleasure. Slowly, thought memory and the troubled times of her present life, it emerges that Pearl ‘lost’ her first and only love, and has lived through an unhappy marriage with Jack, hoping that her Nicholas will return. Now, she is certain that he will. She see the signs everywhere.
This is a slender book, which does not take long to move through, but did leave me with a lot to think about. The blending of a demented woman’s dream-world and the blunt truth about life around the turn of the last century is beautifully realized.
Nina Milton
March 8, 2014
The Visitor, by Katherine Stansfield is written with an aching poignancy and vivid, intense descriptive powers. Set between the 1880s and the mid 1930s, it brilliantly contrasts its protagonist, Pearl, as a child, a young woman and an old woman on the verge of being sucked under by dementia, which allows Stansfield to withhold essential facts until she’s ready to allow us to piece the clues together. The past is now clearer to Pearl than the present, demonstrated by Stansfield through her clever structural weaving of past and present.
Stansfield now lives in Wales, but spent her childhood in Cornwall, and a major character in the story is the beautifully described Cornish fishing village of Morlanow, where in the last century, huge shoals of pilchards made some people rich, while others are lost at sea. Now, between the two world wars, the shoals have gone and the village is preparing to look to tourism and holidaymakers for an income.
Pearl has lived there in Morlanow all her life, and her love of swimming, which she still sneaks away to do in her nightie, comes across as her enduring pleasure. Slowly, thought memory and the troubled times of her present life, it emerges that Pearl ‘lost’ her first and only love, and has lived through an unhappy marriage with Jack, hoping that her Nicholas will return. Now, she is certain that he will. She see the signs everywhere…
May 29, 2017
I am absolutely bowled over by your book. I couldn't stop reading it, or thinking about it when I wasn't able to continue reading. (Devoured it over the space of three days).
Your voice, your style, the delicious detail, the heat, the longing, the passion... every word perfect in place, and sense.
I wanted to be there, with them, walking down the cliff path, living in that time...you made me long for that world, a world I had never even considered, or thought about before.
More please.
Your voice, your style, the delicious detail, the heat, the longing, the passion... every word perfect in place, and sense.
I wanted to be there, with them, walking down the cliff path, living in that time...you made me long for that world, a world I had never even considered, or thought about before.
More please.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews