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The Sing of the Shore
An uncanny, startlingly beautiful story collection steeped in the Cornish landscape, from the award-winning author of Diving Belles and Other Stories and Weathering . At the very edge of England, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the land and visitors flock in with the summer like seagulls, there is a Cornwall that is not shown on postcards. It is a place where communication cables buzz deep beneath the sand; where satellite dishes turn like flowers on clifftops, and where people drift like flotsam, caught in eddying tides. Restless children haunt empty holiday homes, a surfer struggles with the undertow of family life, a girl watches her childhood spin away from her in the whirl of a night-time fairground and, in a web of sea caves, a brother and sister search the dark for something lost. These astonishing, beguiling stories of ghosts and shifting sands, of static caravans and shipwrecked cargo, explore notions of landscape and belonging, permanence and impermanence, and the way places can take hold and never quite let go.
229 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2018
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662 people want to read
About the author
Lucy Wood
33 books74 followersLucy Wood has a Master's degree in Creative Writing from Exeter University. She grew up in Cornwall. Diving Belles is her first work.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
July 2, 2019
Lucy Wood's second short story collection has many of the elements that made her debut Diving Belles so striking, most obviously the Cornish setting. It also shares the rather oppressive atmosphere that pervaded her novel Weathering - her Cornwall is a depressed place whose residents share a certain quiet desperation, and although there are very few stories with overtly supernatural elements, many of them share a spooky ambience.
The title story is also the longest, in which a drifter in his late 30s returns to the campsite where he grew up, which is now run by his older sister, but is decaying and almost deserted. Both of them are obsessed by different elements of their shared past.
The Cornish landscape also contributes to the atmosphere, as does its often stormy weather. Wood's descriptive powers are impressive, and this is another fine collection.
The title story is also the longest, in which a drifter in his late 30s returns to the campsite where he grew up, which is now run by his older sister, but is decaying and almost deserted. Both of them are obsessed by different elements of their shared past.
The Cornish landscape also contributes to the atmosphere, as does its often stormy weather. Wood's descriptive powers are impressive, and this is another fine collection.
May 13, 2018
It's a long time since I read Lucy Wood's first short story collection, Diving Belles, and I don't really recognise the reader I am now in what I wrote about it then. (I'm no longer bothered about stories 'just happening', for one thing. It's easy to forget that at one time I didn't get on with short stories in general.) It strikes me as interesting that my review was quite negative, yet I gave the book a high rating. At the time, I couldn't really articulate what it was about Diving Belles that made it so striking, but it stuck with me, and I've always wanted to read more of Wood's short fiction.
I would say The Sing of the Shore is a little darker, moodier, not quite as whimsical. I assume these stories, like the ones in Diving Belles, are set along the Cornish coast, but you wouldn't necessarily know that without taking note of the epigraph – a definition of the phrase 'sing of the shore' from A Glossary of Cornish Sea-Words. The overall effect is of places abandoned; Wood rarely writes about what you might think of as the British seaside, but rather those forgotten or inaccessible coves where the waves and rocks can be deadly. Her stories are like whispers passed around by locals but never, ever mentioned to tourists. Decay creeps into every corner. Many characters feel like they may or may not be ghosts. Everywhere are atmospheric details – the windows drip with steam from the inside, rain from the outside – and arresting lines – winters are when people disappear.
My favourite was the title story, 'The Sing of the Shore'. Bryce is returning to the town of his childhood, where his sister Kensa looks after the family business, a run-down campsite. He's haunted by memories of summers past, in particular a year when Kensa, who's three years older, began to spend all her time with a runaway boy, Nate. It reminded me a lot of Elizabeth Hand's story 'Near Zennor'. (This is really high praise, because as far as I'm concerned, 'Near Zennor' is the masterpiece, the short story to end all short stories.) It's not the plot, not really, more the setting, the ambience, and the details that capture them. The strangeness of returning to the place you grew up after a long absence. Turning to wave at someone and realising, in a moment of jolting disorientation, that it isn't who you thought. Cold sea air rippling dry grass.
I also liked 'Dreckly'; it's inconclusive, and that could be maddening, but by the end you are so wrapped up in the narrator's voice, the authenticity of it, that it doesn't matter. 'Way the Hell Out' and 'Cables' are a pair of stories related in charming fashion through the conversations held by a group of friends. ('Standing Water' might be one of these, too, just told a little differently – well, that's what she says happened anyway.) 'The Life of a Wave' slowly reveals itself as a devastatingly effective portrait of a boy's relationship with his father, creeping up on you, unfolding in scenes and snippets. Similarly, 'The Dishes' feels like a betrayal, building up a character you like and sympathise with, then making you despise him.
I love the sense of mystery Lucy Wood conveys in her writing. I liked this collection more than Diving Belles – partly because I read differently now, but also, I think, because the author has honed her craft. I read The Sing of the Shore quickly, and in conditions that didn't match its quiet, gloomy mood (in a park, on a bank holiday, in hot weather) but I have kept on thinking about it. Wood's Cornwall stays with you.
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I would say The Sing of the Shore is a little darker, moodier, not quite as whimsical. I assume these stories, like the ones in Diving Belles, are set along the Cornish coast, but you wouldn't necessarily know that without taking note of the epigraph – a definition of the phrase 'sing of the shore' from A Glossary of Cornish Sea-Words. The overall effect is of places abandoned; Wood rarely writes about what you might think of as the British seaside, but rather those forgotten or inaccessible coves where the waves and rocks can be deadly. Her stories are like whispers passed around by locals but never, ever mentioned to tourists. Decay creeps into every corner. Many characters feel like they may or may not be ghosts. Everywhere are atmospheric details – the windows drip with steam from the inside, rain from the outside – and arresting lines – winters are when people disappear.
My favourite was the title story, 'The Sing of the Shore'. Bryce is returning to the town of his childhood, where his sister Kensa looks after the family business, a run-down campsite. He's haunted by memories of summers past, in particular a year when Kensa, who's three years older, began to spend all her time with a runaway boy, Nate. It reminded me a lot of Elizabeth Hand's story 'Near Zennor'. (This is really high praise, because as far as I'm concerned, 'Near Zennor' is the masterpiece, the short story to end all short stories.) It's not the plot, not really, more the setting, the ambience, and the details that capture them. The strangeness of returning to the place you grew up after a long absence. Turning to wave at someone and realising, in a moment of jolting disorientation, that it isn't who you thought. Cold sea air rippling dry grass.
I also liked 'Dreckly'; it's inconclusive, and that could be maddening, but by the end you are so wrapped up in the narrator's voice, the authenticity of it, that it doesn't matter. 'Way the Hell Out' and 'Cables' are a pair of stories related in charming fashion through the conversations held by a group of friends. ('Standing Water' might be one of these, too, just told a little differently – well, that's what she says happened anyway.) 'The Life of a Wave' slowly reveals itself as a devastatingly effective portrait of a boy's relationship with his father, creeping up on you, unfolding in scenes and snippets. Similarly, 'The Dishes' feels like a betrayal, building up a character you like and sympathise with, then making you despise him.
I love the sense of mystery Lucy Wood conveys in her writing. I liked this collection more than Diving Belles – partly because I read differently now, but also, I think, because the author has honed her craft. I read The Sing of the Shore quickly, and in conditions that didn't match its quiet, gloomy mood (in a park, on a bank holiday, in hot weather) but I have kept on thinking about it. Wood's Cornwall stays with you.
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September 25, 2018
Excellent stories - just when I thought I didn't want to read another childhood/adolescent piece there are stories of old age, whole lives and death. All are set in Cornwall and are very well done - you can taste the particles of sand in your teeth, feel dunes shift beneath your feet, think like a surfer of waves that are crumbly or hollow, see the scabby walls of derelict houses above cliff tops, or know what it's like to live in a mildewed caravan for winter. She is a dead good writer. I am impressed.
May 6, 2018
I don't think there was a weak story in this book. Brilliant writing and Wood created a great sense of atmosphere, evocative of what Cornwall is really like (albeit not the picture-postcard vision most of us have of it). Highly recommended!
October 10, 2020
Setting: Cornwall. This collection of short stories is set in one of my favourite holiday locations and I have been saving reading it until I was next down there on holiday, which I am at the moment, to really get the atmosphere.
I was definitely feeling it but these stories are so much darker and deeper than we holidaymakers can possibly feel during our short sojourn to the area - they tell of the people who are there all year round, generally born and raised in Cornwall, and set in the post-tourist times, which are probably both the best and worst of times.
The stories are moody and atmospheric, often featuring children or adults looking back on their childhoods. The characters are often people who are struggling to survive, be it at campsites closed for the season or being moved on as demands for accommodation change. Many of the stories don't really reach a conclusion which, with some, was a bit irritating but, with others, the mere setting of time and place was enough.
Overall, a very enjoyable read and I will be looking out for more of this author's work - 8/10.
I was definitely feeling it but these stories are so much darker and deeper than we holidaymakers can possibly feel during our short sojourn to the area - they tell of the people who are there all year round, generally born and raised in Cornwall, and set in the post-tourist times, which are probably both the best and worst of times.
The stories are moody and atmospheric, often featuring children or adults looking back on their childhoods. The characters are often people who are struggling to survive, be it at campsites closed for the season or being moved on as demands for accommodation change. Many of the stories don't really reach a conclusion which, with some, was a bit irritating but, with others, the mere setting of time and place was enough.
Overall, a very enjoyable read and I will be looking out for more of this author's work - 8/10.
May 14, 2018
Sea has many seams. Sunny for surfers, relentless for sailors, romantic for lovers and endlessly melancholic. Sea is also full of secrets, myths and ghosts, and this is the shelf where you can find Lucy Wood’s latest book of 13 stories.
Summer tourists love Cornwall, the Southwest tip of England, where land meets Atlantic Ocean, but when season is over, it becomes cold and gray. Wet coats, old caravans and untended children.
Soaked locals wandering around the haunted landscape.
Lucy Wood is a British writer from Cornwall. “The Sing of the Shore” is her third book. The sing of the shore is a phrase in Cornish, used by local seagoers. It is the sound made by waves, breaking against the shore and thus giving the experienced fishermen an indication, where they are, when fog or darkness make land invisible.
To find a landmark is a all the book’s characters silent wish. They are haunted by ghosts of past, unfulfilled dreams and unexplainable phenomena.
Teens haunt empty holiday houses, brake in and act like a happy family. Mary and Vincent start to live in a dream house by the sea, but soon the beautiful view is haunted by stranded plastic waste. The couple slowly moves into despair, but the dystopia seems disgustingly plausible. A young man is floating through life, when suddenly his mind is haunted by buried treasure. Somewhere in that sea cave, where you can get in a very low tide, but will he manage to return on time? The buried cables under the sea haunt the ears with a strange white noise.
Intriguing, scary and damp. I wanted to get through this book as fast as possible, without looking over my shoulder. But when I closed it, all I wanted was to bruise my knee as a kid or to feel the sand between my teeth. How is it possible for a book, full of ghosts, to create such a raw and honest world?
Each story plays with form and reader’s perception. It seemed, a girl is talking, but it turns out to be a boy. It seemed, they all are grownups, when suddenly the last milk tooth is loose, and she puts it back with her tongue. One story ends where it started. Another melts together past and present, and you are left wondering, if siblings got lost in underground caves now or when they were kids?
Story about a dad, obsessed surfer, haunted by waves, seems as a tribute to Virginia Woolf’s book “The Waves”. Monologue floats through the decades just like in Woolf’s novel, and the soliloquy is interrupted only by the descriptions of the sea and waves. Cornwall is the place where Woolf spent her childhood summers and she kept returning there in her writing.
Sea is ever present, also in lives of Lucy Wood’s characters. Nothing is permanent, nothing is stable and if it seems so, you are probably stuck on a sand bank.
Summer tourists love Cornwall, the Southwest tip of England, where land meets Atlantic Ocean, but when season is over, it becomes cold and gray. Wet coats, old caravans and untended children.
Soaked locals wandering around the haunted landscape.
Lucy Wood is a British writer from Cornwall. “The Sing of the Shore” is her third book. The sing of the shore is a phrase in Cornish, used by local seagoers. It is the sound made by waves, breaking against the shore and thus giving the experienced fishermen an indication, where they are, when fog or darkness make land invisible.
To find a landmark is a all the book’s characters silent wish. They are haunted by ghosts of past, unfulfilled dreams and unexplainable phenomena.
Teens haunt empty holiday houses, brake in and act like a happy family. Mary and Vincent start to live in a dream house by the sea, but soon the beautiful view is haunted by stranded plastic waste. The couple slowly moves into despair, but the dystopia seems disgustingly plausible. A young man is floating through life, when suddenly his mind is haunted by buried treasure. Somewhere in that sea cave, where you can get in a very low tide, but will he manage to return on time? The buried cables under the sea haunt the ears with a strange white noise.
Intriguing, scary and damp. I wanted to get through this book as fast as possible, without looking over my shoulder. But when I closed it, all I wanted was to bruise my knee as a kid or to feel the sand between my teeth. How is it possible for a book, full of ghosts, to create such a raw and honest world?
Each story plays with form and reader’s perception. It seemed, a girl is talking, but it turns out to be a boy. It seemed, they all are grownups, when suddenly the last milk tooth is loose, and she puts it back with her tongue. One story ends where it started. Another melts together past and present, and you are left wondering, if siblings got lost in underground caves now or when they were kids?
Story about a dad, obsessed surfer, haunted by waves, seems as a tribute to Virginia Woolf’s book “The Waves”. Monologue floats through the decades just like in Woolf’s novel, and the soliloquy is interrupted only by the descriptions of the sea and waves. Cornwall is the place where Woolf spent her childhood summers and she kept returning there in her writing.
Sea is ever present, also in lives of Lucy Wood’s characters. Nothing is permanent, nothing is stable and if it seems so, you are probably stuck on a sand bank.
August 13, 2018
This is a beautifully crafted book of short stories based around the seascapes of Cornwall. It is haunting, evocative and completely contemporary. I found something particularly current (and very state of the UK) about the significance of houses in the stories and how they affected the characters. There is a sense of alienation and loneliness in these stories that reminds me of the best JG Ballard stories I've read : a certain playful malevolence under the surface (perhaps this is the sea in a nutshell?)
Standout stories for me were 'Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Direlict', a tale of a retired couple who begin to retreat from the world as they de-pollute their local beach and lose the battle against the rubbish that washes up. It seems a commentary on the wasteful world and destroyed planet we live on, with the irony being that this very couple would have been beneficiaries of the system that created this waste. 'By-the - wind sailors' is a haunting tale of ghosts or ghost like characters who permanently live between unsuitable and unsafe temporary abodes. It's a real parable for our ages when so many in society struggle to have a home of their own and society deems them ghosts. 'The Dishes' was clever, a stressed stay at home Dad becomes tormented by noises in the house next door but are they real?
I didn't enjoy the stories which featured young people. I found the characters dull and one dimensional 'The Life of a Wave' which charts the formative years of a boy /man and his relationship with his feckless surfer father was beautiful though.
I finished this collection in a day, while I found some stories very readable some did not hold my attention and I skimmed them. While this is a well-written collection, something was really missing for me and I found it a bit hollow and lifeless but it's an interesting read. I think Diving Belles, the author's previous collection would probably be a better fit for my personal tastes.
Standout stories for me were 'Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Direlict', a tale of a retired couple who begin to retreat from the world as they de-pollute their local beach and lose the battle against the rubbish that washes up. It seems a commentary on the wasteful world and destroyed planet we live on, with the irony being that this very couple would have been beneficiaries of the system that created this waste. 'By-the - wind sailors' is a haunting tale of ghosts or ghost like characters who permanently live between unsuitable and unsafe temporary abodes. It's a real parable for our ages when so many in society struggle to have a home of their own and society deems them ghosts. 'The Dishes' was clever, a stressed stay at home Dad becomes tormented by noises in the house next door but are they real?
I didn't enjoy the stories which featured young people. I found the characters dull and one dimensional 'The Life of a Wave' which charts the formative years of a boy /man and his relationship with his feckless surfer father was beautiful though.
I finished this collection in a day, while I found some stories very readable some did not hold my attention and I skimmed them. While this is a well-written collection, something was really missing for me and I found it a bit hollow and lifeless but it's an interesting read. I think Diving Belles, the author's previous collection would probably be a better fit for my personal tastes.
July 2, 2018
A dark and brooding set of short stories that are written so beautifully that it takes a while to stop thinking about them once they're over!
Set around Cornwall, there is a wide variety of situations, characters and themes but they all seem to be linked by quite an unsettling thread throughout. This isn't a collection of light and fluffy stories!
My favourites were the title story - The Sing of the Shore - and The Dishes which were tales of families and ghosts of the past not letting them go. The Dishes in particular was spectacular in its' mood and subtle way of storytelling, and you're never entirely sure whether things are happening or they are being imagined by the characters.
There were only a couple of stories in the book that didn't make an impression on me, but it's a book you can dip in and out of, and re-read at whim as you pick out different things from each story everytime.
Set around Cornwall, there is a wide variety of situations, characters and themes but they all seem to be linked by quite an unsettling thread throughout. This isn't a collection of light and fluffy stories!
My favourites were the title story - The Sing of the Shore - and The Dishes which were tales of families and ghosts of the past not letting them go. The Dishes in particular was spectacular in its' mood and subtle way of storytelling, and you're never entirely sure whether things are happening or they are being imagined by the characters.
There were only a couple of stories in the book that didn't make an impression on me, but it's a book you can dip in and out of, and re-read at whim as you pick out different things from each story everytime.
November 10, 2019
3.5*
I bought this book pretty much on a whim - I thought the cover was pretty, I liked the promise of haunting and Gothic stories, particularly being based in Cornwall, as I'm from a seaside town.
This ended up being okay. A few stories I really enjoyed, but wouldn't say that I loved any, and a few ran together and seemed the same to me. I think the collection could've been cut down by at least 3 stories. I wanted the stories to be creepier, more like the "Cornish Gothic" promised in the blurb, but this is more about unsettling human stories.
I've given the collection a relatively high rating due to its quality of writing. I felt like I got to know characters quite quickly, and understood being in their heads very well. This collection has a focus on physicality - observing physical things happening, interactions between people, description of locations, but lacks the emotion that would finish off these stories and make them perfect pieces.
I bought this book pretty much on a whim - I thought the cover was pretty, I liked the promise of haunting and Gothic stories, particularly being based in Cornwall, as I'm from a seaside town.
This ended up being okay. A few stories I really enjoyed, but wouldn't say that I loved any, and a few ran together and seemed the same to me. I think the collection could've been cut down by at least 3 stories. I wanted the stories to be creepier, more like the "Cornish Gothic" promised in the blurb, but this is more about unsettling human stories.
I've given the collection a relatively high rating due to its quality of writing. I felt like I got to know characters quite quickly, and understood being in their heads very well. This collection has a focus on physicality - observing physical things happening, interactions between people, description of locations, but lacks the emotion that would finish off these stories and make them perfect pieces.
June 18, 2022
What a book - not quite weird fiction, but definitely the adjacent genre to it, these extraordinary little vignettes (stories doesn’t quite seem like the correct word) are full of haunting, worrying moments that hint at something stranger and darker but never resolve into anything that simple or glib. Ostensibly a series of stories about Cornish life, they’re a lot subtler than that concept suggests they would be - I spent a hefty time in the county in my teens, and know how impossibly odd these places can be and how troubled the county is by all the emmets who’ve decamped there (here in the Calder valley we call them Offcumden, but at least these actually LIVE here for the most part) for bits of the year. Wood is careful not to make the book an “us versus them” thing, but like great chunks of Wales this is an area that’s to some extent mostly a liminal space now. Industry is dead, tourism is everything and prices are rocketing for locals - but that alone would not be fertile ground for storytelling.
So instead we get campsites, holiday lets, retirement homes, surfers, those who strive to get by, those who barely can… the closest thing to the tone here is Mark Jenkin’s extraordinary Bait, but that is an angrier story than these ever are. Wood is far more interested in despair and sadness and loneliness and distance between people. She also manages to do some extraordinary things to link the stories - names sort of bubble up again and again, glimpses of other stories turn up in others, and by the final story you’re wondering exactly how many hidden references have been missed (it can’t be an accident that we have a Nate in the story before and a Nathan in the next one, surely? But maybe it is a coincidence and Wood is playing with the connections we look to answer these sometimes ambiguous little tales).
It’s quite an achievement to continually give us 95% of a narrative and then obfuscate the last 5% in a way that isn’t annoying, but she does this a lot. Wood also has a wonderful trick, used devastatingly in One Foot In Front Of The Other, of letting phrases sort of duplicate ambiguously rather like she does the names. So the effect is you feel slightly unstuck in time. It’s a woozy effect but so cleverly done, unsettling and troubling but deeply assured. An extraordinary collection
So instead we get campsites, holiday lets, retirement homes, surfers, those who strive to get by, those who barely can… the closest thing to the tone here is Mark Jenkin’s extraordinary Bait, but that is an angrier story than these ever are. Wood is far more interested in despair and sadness and loneliness and distance between people. She also manages to do some extraordinary things to link the stories - names sort of bubble up again and again, glimpses of other stories turn up in others, and by the final story you’re wondering exactly how many hidden references have been missed (it can’t be an accident that we have a Nate in the story before and a Nathan in the next one, surely? But maybe it is a coincidence and Wood is playing with the connections we look to answer these sometimes ambiguous little tales).
It’s quite an achievement to continually give us 95% of a narrative and then obfuscate the last 5% in a way that isn’t annoying, but she does this a lot. Wood also has a wonderful trick, used devastatingly in One Foot In Front Of The Other, of letting phrases sort of duplicate ambiguously rather like she does the names. So the effect is you feel slightly unstuck in time. It’s a woozy effect but so cleverly done, unsettling and troubling but deeply assured. An extraordinary collection
June 4, 2020
Perhaps I judge this too harshly in comparison to ‘Diving Belles’ which I read quite a few years back in the perfect winter season in a cosy library. Some books need a certain atmosphere, and maybe I was in the wrong one for this one- but I just couldn’t connect to it so well. It’s descriptions have moved beyond what I saw as beautiful to convoluted, and I struggled with a lot of the characterisation. There was a more topical lilt to the author’s prior book of short stories, and while this one has some of those traits still (like with the beach pollution story) it veered away from where her prior work was.
I think this one may be worth me giving a reread someday, perhaps with her other works, but it was a bit of a letdown. I just wish that more connection could be formed to characters and that the likeability was there- it makes a world of difference.
I think this one may be worth me giving a reread someday, perhaps with her other works, but it was a bit of a letdown. I just wish that more connection could be formed to characters and that the likeability was there- it makes a world of difference.
September 10, 2023
Easy enough to get through. Would not call it "haunting," "heart-thumping," "elegant," or "exceptional," as boasted on the cover. I fail to see how any of the stories are really connected, except for them all being set in Cornwall.
Maybe it just wasn't my taste. I was looking for something spooky. This didn't do it for me.
Sorry. I'm sure it's golden for other readers. 🤷🏻♀️
Maybe it just wasn't my taste. I was looking for something spooky. This didn't do it for me.
Sorry. I'm sure it's golden for other readers. 🤷🏻♀️
July 18, 2019
I think 'Diving Belles' was a hard book to beat. Lucy Wood captured the strange, eerie and melancholic world of Cornwall with all its myths and wonders to a point. I went days where I couldn't stop thinking of the stories. Here, in 'The Sing of the Shore' she has tried to follow this up. Most of the stories are interesting, and link each other very faintly, however they don't seem to have the same strangeness as the previous book. I enjoyed the book as a compilation of short stories, but I couldn't rate it as highly for the unique weirdness I had felt in the earlier collection. The stories involve people who are lost. who are grieving, who are lonely, who are angry and who are outsiders, but they all have a similar connection. I think I would read another of Lucy Wood's collections if she wrote one, to see what the contrast between the books would be - I still think she is a very talented writer.
October 23, 2019
From the blurb and various descriptions of this one, I had expected it to be darker and more uncanny than it was. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely not light and bright either – but the vibe you get is more of an uneasy sadness or restlessness. One or two stories hint at something supernatural, another hints at murder, a third lists a number of deaths throughout a year, but the strongest stories (in my opinion) are not that kind of dark. Rather, they seem to be about searching for something but never really finding it – which is of course its own kind of dark. A boy searches for a way to be a real family, a girl searches for a way out, an elderly couple searches for a life in peace, another boy searches for the love of a father who is present, but not really.
‘Home Scar’, ‘Salthouse’, ‘The Life of a Wave’ and ‘Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict’ were the strongest and my absolute favourites. A few were meh, such as ‘One Foot in Front of the Other’. The rest were pretty good, though not exceptional. I enjoyed Wood’s writing a lot. She’s excellent at changing her voice to fit the narrator; it never felt like the same person telling different stories, which I always appreciate, and she’s particularly good at writing from a child’s point of view. She’s also superb at creating the right atmosphere. I could almost see the windblown Cornish shores with their rocks and caves and incoming tides in front of me while reading, everything somehow in a colour that seemed drained and greyish, matching the atmosphere perfectly.
You also get the feeling that the stories – or at least some of them – take place in the same community or area. A few names and characters appear in more than one story, creating a sort of familiarity. About halfway through the collection, you start to look for signs that this or that story takes place near another. Sometimes that annoys me (write a novel if you want your characters to have more page-time), but here I didn’t mind it at all. It actually became part of the enjoyment to recognise things from earlier.
Overall, I really enjoyed this collection – the strong stories made up for the weaker ones – and I have a feeling that a few of the stories might become all time favourites. I don’t fully understand why it has such a relatively low rating on here, but at least I can sing its praises and hope someone else will pick it up 😉
/NK
‘Home Scar’, ‘Salthouse’, ‘The Life of a Wave’ and ‘Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict’ were the strongest and my absolute favourites. A few were meh, such as ‘One Foot in Front of the Other’. The rest were pretty good, though not exceptional. I enjoyed Wood’s writing a lot. She’s excellent at changing her voice to fit the narrator; it never felt like the same person telling different stories, which I always appreciate, and she’s particularly good at writing from a child’s point of view. She’s also superb at creating the right atmosphere. I could almost see the windblown Cornish shores with their rocks and caves and incoming tides in front of me while reading, everything somehow in a colour that seemed drained and greyish, matching the atmosphere perfectly.
You also get the feeling that the stories – or at least some of them – take place in the same community or area. A few names and characters appear in more than one story, creating a sort of familiarity. About halfway through the collection, you start to look for signs that this or that story takes place near another. Sometimes that annoys me (write a novel if you want your characters to have more page-time), but here I didn’t mind it at all. It actually became part of the enjoyment to recognise things from earlier.
Overall, I really enjoyed this collection – the strong stories made up for the weaker ones – and I have a feeling that a few of the stories might become all time favourites. I don’t fully understand why it has such a relatively low rating on here, but at least I can sing its praises and hope someone else will pick it up 😉
/NK
April 12, 2019
None of the writing's heavy-handed. The age, gender and name of the main character is disclosed late if at all. Children seem very grown up. Siblings/best-friends are temporarily replaced by newcomers. The characters don't reveal much. The elements fill the resulting void - dogs bark in the distance, sand gets everywhere, winters are harsh.
I wasn't keen on the shorter pieces. Most of the longer stories are well worth a read, their final sentence often alluding to the theme which is often to do with transience/permanence.
Home Scar - 3 kids (11 or 14 years old; about to go to the big school) break into vacant houses on the coast line. I like the dialogue, the description of the scenery. At the end they try staying the night in a house, planning to leave hardly a trace of their stay.
The Dishes - Jay looks after the baby while Lorna works. The couple see little of each other. She says nothing in the story, and the baby can only babble, echoing noises from next door. Desperate for words, he listens to the noises and voices from next door, a house he'd thought empty. He sneaks into their garden to peer through a window. All he hears, finally, is "Going." At the end he notices that their door's ajar. As he goes in holding the baby, the phone rings. The house seems uninhabited, like the couple's relationship.
Dreckly - 1st person female narrator plus Freya and Joey (all 26 years old, all casual workers) are metal detecting when the tide's especially low, looking for fabled treasure. The narrator, parted from others, finds a part-buried metal box, but because the tide's coming in fast, she buries it. She's unable to find it subsequently.
There's a lot about people acting through habit rather than reason, most significantly " people get certain ideas in their heads about you, and they never let you forget them. After a while, you find yourself doing exactly what they expect because mostly it's just easier"
Salthouse - The narrator, Evie, and Gina have just started secondary school. As they drag an xmas tree to contribute to a coastal defences project they reminisce. Passing a fair, they decide to go in. They meet a teacher from their old school. Evie goes off with a boy. Evie's alone. As the teacher's about to discover Gina with the boy, Evie's last milk tooth dramatically comes out, causing a distraction. Evie wins Gina back and they continue to the dunes alone. I guess the story's about not wanting to let go of childhood. At the end, the sand never changes.
Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict - About a retired couple who've moved to a cliff top house. Theme: The onset of dementia - litter as an analogy for aging.
The Sing of the Shore - Bryce visits sister Kensa at the campsite where they grew up. They're both about 40. It's run-down, about to be sold. Kensa's living in a caravan. All isn't well with her, though there are no details. . There's a parallel time-line comprising flashbacks of when they were 9 (Bryce) and 12, when a 17 year-old, Nate, camped alone for a while then disappeared. Kensa had liked him, wanting to search in dangerous caves for him. At the end of the story Byrce leads Kensa to the caves. He goes in, gets lost, and she's about to find him.
By-the-Wind Sailors - Theme: Re-possession (by land-lords, and by returning families).
I wasn't keen on the shorter pieces. Most of the longer stories are well worth a read, their final sentence often alluding to the theme which is often to do with transience/permanence.
Home Scar - 3 kids (11 or 14 years old; about to go to the big school) break into vacant houses on the coast line. I like the dialogue, the description of the scenery. At the end they try staying the night in a house, planning to leave hardly a trace of their stay.
The Dishes - Jay looks after the baby while Lorna works. The couple see little of each other. She says nothing in the story, and the baby can only babble, echoing noises from next door. Desperate for words, he listens to the noises and voices from next door, a house he'd thought empty. He sneaks into their garden to peer through a window. All he hears, finally, is "Going." At the end he notices that their door's ajar. As he goes in holding the baby, the phone rings. The house seems uninhabited, like the couple's relationship.
Dreckly - 1st person female narrator plus Freya and Joey (all 26 years old, all casual workers) are metal detecting when the tide's especially low, looking for fabled treasure. The narrator, parted from others, finds a part-buried metal box, but because the tide's coming in fast, she buries it. She's unable to find it subsequently.
There's a lot about people acting through habit rather than reason, most significantly " people get certain ideas in their heads about you, and they never let you forget them. After a while, you find yourself doing exactly what they expect because mostly it's just easier"
Salthouse - The narrator, Evie, and Gina have just started secondary school. As they drag an xmas tree to contribute to a coastal defences project they reminisce. Passing a fair, they decide to go in. They meet a teacher from their old school. Evie goes off with a boy. Evie's alone. As the teacher's about to discover Gina with the boy, Evie's last milk tooth dramatically comes out, causing a distraction. Evie wins Gina back and they continue to the dunes alone. I guess the story's about not wanting to let go of childhood. At the end, the sand never changes.
Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict - About a retired couple who've moved to a cliff top house. Theme: The onset of dementia - litter as an analogy for aging.
The Sing of the Shore - Bryce visits sister Kensa at the campsite where they grew up. They're both about 40. It's run-down, about to be sold. Kensa's living in a caravan. All isn't well with her, though there are no details. . There's a parallel time-line comprising flashbacks of when they were 9 (Bryce) and 12, when a 17 year-old, Nate, camped alone for a while then disappeared. Kensa had liked him, wanting to search in dangerous caves for him. At the end of the story Byrce leads Kensa to the caves. He goes in, gets lost, and she's about to find him.
By-the-Wind Sailors - Theme: Re-possession (by land-lords, and by returning families).
January 24, 2025
★★★½
A lot of the shorter stories, especially the ones featuring dialogue only, really didn't work for me. I'm already struggling to remember their contents. An exception to this was 'One Foot In Front Of The Other'. Extremely short, but very claustrophobic in feel, how it's written, and what happens. As a resident of a different area with lots of farm animals in the surrounding fields, I can, ugh, relate. I also loved how unexplained it was. What was the protagonist running from/to? Who knows!
Actually claustrophobia, or feeling trapped in one's circumstances, is a common theme throughout, and is featured in all my favourite stories in the collection; 'The Dishes', 'Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict', 'The Sing of the Shore' and 'By-the-Wind Sailors'. These strong stories really made up for the weaker ones, personally, and I can recommend giving the whole collection a read.
"Winters are when people disappear."Giving a star rating for a short story collection is always tricky, because it's very rare for me to feel strongly about every single story there. This was a quick read, and the theme linking the stories is a wonderful sense of place. Cold and empty Cornwall in off-season winter.
A lot of the shorter stories, especially the ones featuring dialogue only, really didn't work for me. I'm already struggling to remember their contents. An exception to this was 'One Foot In Front Of The Other'. Extremely short, but very claustrophobic in feel, how it's written, and what happens. As a resident of a different area with lots of farm animals in the surrounding fields, I can, ugh, relate. I also loved how unexplained it was. What was the protagonist running from/to? Who knows!
Actually claustrophobia, or feeling trapped in one's circumstances, is a common theme throughout, and is featured in all my favourite stories in the collection; 'The Dishes', 'Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict', 'The Sing of the Shore' and 'By-the-Wind Sailors'. These strong stories really made up for the weaker ones, personally, and I can recommend giving the whole collection a read.
August 16, 2019
Lucy Wood never lets me down - the only other short story collection I’ve enjoyed as much as this was her other one
March 7, 2021
Lyrical tales of that liminal space between sea and shore, shot with wonderful metaphors and a deeply unsettling sense of space and absence
March 20, 2019
You might also enjoy:
✱ Thirteen Ways of Looking
✱ Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
★★★☆☆ Home Scar
★★★☆☆ The Dishes
★★★☆☆ Dreckly
★★★☆☆ One Foot in Front of the Other
★★★☆☆ Way the Hell Out
★★★★☆ Salthouse
★★★☆☆ Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict
★★★☆☆ The Life of a Wave
★★★☆☆ Standing Water
★★★☆☆ A Year of Buryings
★★★☆☆ Cables
★★★☆☆ The Sing of the Shore
★★★☆☆ By-the-Wind Sailors
✱ Thirteen Ways of Looking
✱ Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
★★★☆☆ Home Scar
★★★☆☆ The Dishes
★★★☆☆ Dreckly
★★★☆☆ One Foot in Front of the Other
★★★☆☆ Way the Hell Out
★★★★☆ Salthouse
★★★☆☆ Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict
★★★☆☆ The Life of a Wave
★★★☆☆ Standing Water
★★★☆☆ A Year of Buryings
★★★☆☆ Cables
★★★☆☆ The Sing of the Shore
★★★☆☆ By-the-Wind Sailors
August 15, 2020
It has been a while since I read Diving Belles, but I remember it being whimsical and lovely and really enjoying it. Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind reading this, but I found The Sing Of The Shore just a bit grim and dreary, with no sense of the stories going anywhere and without any kind of magic to them. I liked the start of the title story, but then it just stopped. Overall a bit of a disappointment for me.
April 24, 2019
I love Lucy Wood’s writing. She captures the essence of the sea, so much so get you feel you are sitting there with the characters. However, I think her novel, The Weathering was better. Just my humble opinion.
August 18, 2021
I’m not sure whether I fully understood this book.
The stories didn’t seem to go anywhere. I just found them confusing and pointless.
The stories didn’t seem to go anywhere. I just found them confusing and pointless.
November 12, 2020
3.5 stars.
(Here are some trigger warnings. Nothing in this review).
It's difficult to review a short story collection when my opinions varied so much with every story. However, I will say that Lucy Wood's chosen themes and focus on the unseen, off-season version of Cornwall that most are unfamiliar with, remained intriguing throughout The Sing of the Shore. Equally, I was pleased with the amount of diversity in Wood's choice of characters - readers are introduced to a cast who range in age, interests and relationship to the area which was a definite strength of the collection.
Despite this, I was not so enthusiastic about every story in this collection. Wood starts strongly, following young Ivor and his friends as they explore abandoned holiday homes during winter. She also ends strongly with the tale of two siblings reuniting in adulthood at the caravan park where they grew up.
I struggled with a couple of the shortest stories - 'Way the Hell Out' and 'Cables'. Both of these are dominated by dialogue, creating the illusion that the story has two narrators who are sharing the lines of a storybook. Not only did this technique dislocate me from the story, but I also struggled to understand the point of these characters framing what I thought to be the more interesting narrative.
Overall, I was pretty pleased with The Sing of the Shore. It definitely gave me lots to think about, what with its unique perspectives, as well as a particularly strong story - 'Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict' - which highlighted the environmental issue of plastic pollution in the ocean.
(Here are some trigger warnings. Nothing in this review).
It's difficult to review a short story collection when my opinions varied so much with every story. However, I will say that Lucy Wood's chosen themes and focus on the unseen, off-season version of Cornwall that most are unfamiliar with, remained intriguing throughout The Sing of the Shore. Equally, I was pleased with the amount of diversity in Wood's choice of characters - readers are introduced to a cast who range in age, interests and relationship to the area which was a definite strength of the collection.
Despite this, I was not so enthusiastic about every story in this collection. Wood starts strongly, following young Ivor and his friends as they explore abandoned holiday homes during winter. She also ends strongly with the tale of two siblings reuniting in adulthood at the caravan park where they grew up.
I struggled with a couple of the shortest stories - 'Way the Hell Out' and 'Cables'. Both of these are dominated by dialogue, creating the illusion that the story has two narrators who are sharing the lines of a storybook. Not only did this technique dislocate me from the story, but I also struggled to understand the point of these characters framing what I thought to be the more interesting narrative.
Overall, I was pretty pleased with The Sing of the Shore. It definitely gave me lots to think about, what with its unique perspectives, as well as a particularly strong story - 'Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict' - which highlighted the environmental issue of plastic pollution in the ocean.
December 29, 2025
These are very atmospheric and beautifully written but unsettling and mostly sad. The life that all these characters are living is sort of grimy and depressing and hazy.
Home Scar - kids in an empty beach town break into houses. 3/5
The Dishes - guy with a baby goes crazy hearing noises next door. Very disorienting, 4/5
Dreckly - treasure hunter finds a buried chest but doesn't open it. 4/5
One Foot in Front of the Other - woman trapped in cow field. Hard to follow, pretty short. 3/5
Way the Hell Out - people whose house keeps getting broken into. Unsettling. 4/5
Salthouse - girl whose friend gets her first boyfriend. 3/5
Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict - retired couple on a beach haunted by trash. I have no clue how Wood seems to make living on a beach seem so endless and oppressive. 4/5
The Life of a Wave - guy whose dad is somewhat absent and an obsessive surfer. Sad, 4/5
Standing Water - neighbors fighting over a shared culvert. Ooh! This one was a little different but I liked it, very spooky. 4/5
A Year of Buryings - a calendar of ghosts. Ok, it didn't fully come together for me. 3/5
Cables - guy digging holes on the beach because of a sound he can hear. 3/5
The Sing of the Shore - siblings who live in a camping ground. I wish this was longer, very good. 5/5
By-the-Wind Sailors - a family keeps moving around between short-term accommodations. I was suspicious the whole time that they may actually be ghosts.
Home Scar - kids in an empty beach town break into houses. 3/5
The Dishes - guy with a baby goes crazy hearing noises next door. Very disorienting, 4/5
Dreckly - treasure hunter finds a buried chest but doesn't open it. 4/5
One Foot in Front of the Other - woman trapped in cow field. Hard to follow, pretty short. 3/5
Way the Hell Out - people whose house keeps getting broken into. Unsettling. 4/5
Salthouse - girl whose friend gets her first boyfriend. 3/5
Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict - retired couple on a beach haunted by trash. I have no clue how Wood seems to make living on a beach seem so endless and oppressive. 4/5
The Life of a Wave - guy whose dad is somewhat absent and an obsessive surfer. Sad, 4/5
Standing Water - neighbors fighting over a shared culvert. Ooh! This one was a little different but I liked it, very spooky. 4/5
A Year of Buryings - a calendar of ghosts. Ok, it didn't fully come together for me. 3/5
Cables - guy digging holes on the beach because of a sound he can hear. 3/5
The Sing of the Shore - siblings who live in a camping ground. I wish this was longer, very good. 5/5
By-the-Wind Sailors - a family keeps moving around between short-term accommodations. I was suspicious the whole time that they may actually be ghosts.
May 16, 2022
"the spring wind blew in strained sporadic gusts, like it was working itself up to something. the sky was leaden and low but a shaft of sun broke through, sweeping across like a searchlight."
in the hours following a lunar eclipse which peaked in the early morning here in the rural north of the north atlantic sea isles, it's as dark and overcast as evening.
rain peppered the windowpanes as i listened to the penultimate story in this collection, 'the sing of the shore': about a pair of adult siblings, lost in life, haunting a run down campsite on the wind-whipped cornish coast that their family owned when the two were children. it matched perfectly the melancholic and foreboding atmosphere of the day.
"once they were past the tents and into the first field, kensa turned the torch back on. there was a thin moon and the clouds crowded around it like moths. the barley bent in the wind.
they walked in silence, kensa first, bryce behind,...trying to stop himself turning back with every step. they crossed the edge of the field, then climbed the gate. something rustled on the ground, then darted away.
kensa turned around to look at bryce. the buckles on her sandals rattled softly and the moon stripped her face with silver. she looked different somehow: like his sister but also not like his sister at all."
i love you, lucy wood. i hope that you never stop doing what you do.
favourite stories: the dishes, one foot in front of the other, the sing of the shore
in the hours following a lunar eclipse which peaked in the early morning here in the rural north of the north atlantic sea isles, it's as dark and overcast as evening.
rain peppered the windowpanes as i listened to the penultimate story in this collection, 'the sing of the shore': about a pair of adult siblings, lost in life, haunting a run down campsite on the wind-whipped cornish coast that their family owned when the two were children. it matched perfectly the melancholic and foreboding atmosphere of the day.
"once they were past the tents and into the first field, kensa turned the torch back on. there was a thin moon and the clouds crowded around it like moths. the barley bent in the wind.
they walked in silence, kensa first, bryce behind,...trying to stop himself turning back with every step. they crossed the edge of the field, then climbed the gate. something rustled on the ground, then darted away.
kensa turned around to look at bryce. the buckles on her sandals rattled softly and the moon stripped her face with silver. she looked different somehow: like his sister but also not like his sister at all."
i love you, lucy wood. i hope that you never stop doing what you do.
favourite stories: the dishes, one foot in front of the other, the sing of the shore
September 16, 2020
'There is a Cornwall that is not shown on the postcards'.
This collection of stories really capture the atmosphere of Cornwall away from the tourist places but with creepy, spooky and unsettling themes. Very atmospheric, I could feel the places and sense the landscape. The sea is constantly present. A good descriptive writing style and a great skill of creating relatable characters in just a few pages. I enjoyed all of these stories and will definitely read more by this author. Some stories definitely stayed with me.
One Foot in Front of the Other - very eery and still. I found myself having to walk through a field full of cows on my way to the beach in Beadnell, Northumberland, just a few days later. This story definitely resonated then!
Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict - felt like a suffocating warning about the cumulative impact humans are having on the oceans and the coast.
A Year of Buryings - a snapshot of life, endings and what people leave behind and how some people choose to remain with us.
By- the-Wind Sailors - for me this captured the seasonal transient nature of some of the population of Cornwall (tourism), how this has impacted on housing and what it means for those left behind.
Excellent collection of short stories for those who know and love Cornwall.
This collection of stories really capture the atmosphere of Cornwall away from the tourist places but with creepy, spooky and unsettling themes. Very atmospheric, I could feel the places and sense the landscape. The sea is constantly present. A good descriptive writing style and a great skill of creating relatable characters in just a few pages. I enjoyed all of these stories and will definitely read more by this author. Some stories definitely stayed with me.
One Foot in Front of the Other - very eery and still. I found myself having to walk through a field full of cows on my way to the beach in Beadnell, Northumberland, just a few days later. This story definitely resonated then!
Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict - felt like a suffocating warning about the cumulative impact humans are having on the oceans and the coast.
A Year of Buryings - a snapshot of life, endings and what people leave behind and how some people choose to remain with us.
By- the-Wind Sailors - for me this captured the seasonal transient nature of some of the population of Cornwall (tourism), how this has impacted on housing and what it means for those left behind.
Excellent collection of short stories for those who know and love Cornwall.
April 18, 2022
For a class. One of my favorites for it but not quite life-changing.
Where I think this book excels for me is the sense of place. It's not quite a work that gave me any earth-shattering things to ponder (as of writing, at least) but if Cornwall's a cold, rocky, sparsely populated beach then this paints it well. The stories link together just enough to clue you into how news travels, nature is an uncaring force, and an isolated village struggles to cope with being as isolated as it is.
It's got some distinct gothic elements to it in that sort of "people are tiny" way and the things that go unexplained, stepping out of realism and into folklore in spots. It's a really interesting niche Wood's carved out for herself here.
It's a quick read, too, and Lucy Wood's not someone with so much buzz around her name. If nothing else you could get here early, so to speak. As of writing this review I've got another of her collections coming in the mail.
Where I think this book excels for me is the sense of place. It's not quite a work that gave me any earth-shattering things to ponder (as of writing, at least) but if Cornwall's a cold, rocky, sparsely populated beach then this paints it well. The stories link together just enough to clue you into how news travels, nature is an uncaring force, and an isolated village struggles to cope with being as isolated as it is.
It's got some distinct gothic elements to it in that sort of "people are tiny" way and the things that go unexplained, stepping out of realism and into folklore in spots. It's a really interesting niche Wood's carved out for herself here.
It's a quick read, too, and Lucy Wood's not someone with so much buzz around her name. If nothing else you could get here early, so to speak. As of writing this review I've got another of her collections coming in the mail.
November 2, 2021
I have been reading this book on and more often than not off for most of the year, but it's time to put the old girl down. I rarely struggle to make my way through a horror anthology, but I've met my match in The Sing of the Shore, which is without a doubt one of the dullest collections I've ever had the misfortune of wading through.
Wood's prose is as barren as the rocky outcrops she supposedly writes of. Each description is so opaque and each scene so full of vagaries it's impossible to discern what is meant to be horrifying. She seems to be under the mistaken impression that obscurity is automatically scary and consequently I was left stranded on Lovecraft's placid island of ignorance when I wished to be drowned in the black sea of infinity.
Altogether a very disappointing work. Did not finish.
Wood's prose is as barren as the rocky outcrops she supposedly writes of. Each description is so opaque and each scene so full of vagaries it's impossible to discern what is meant to be horrifying. She seems to be under the mistaken impression that obscurity is automatically scary and consequently I was left stranded on Lovecraft's placid island of ignorance when I wished to be drowned in the black sea of infinity.
Altogether a very disappointing work. Did not finish.
December 11, 2020
This collection was so good. Beautifully written, spooky stories with a centralising setting and cast of characters circling around that place. Sometimes real, sometimes experimental, sometimes a bit speculative. I would say pretty light on the speculative spectrum... but more overall darkness coming through in the author's artful use of language and tone. Many of the individual stories are short and I don't want to give away too much plot. This is Lucy playing around with the form, having found comfortable spaces to occupy within the short story landscape. I don't want to say she's at the top of her game because she may just keep going up, but boy was I impressed. I'll definitely be reading more.
December 26, 2023
Lucy Wood's writing and storytelling is just incredible, she is hugely underrated! Her short stories create captivating worlds set in an alternate vision of the south west coast, filled with strange yet familiar characters and voices.
Although there are definite themes weaving the collection together - class; expectations and longing; ghosts and what we leave behind; people living on the edges of society - each story is very different in terms of perspective and writing style.
There's also something timeless about these stories - they are distinctly modern and yet possess something ancient and familiar. Like Diving Belles, it's a book I can't wait to read again.
Although there are definite themes weaving the collection together - class; expectations and longing; ghosts and what we leave behind; people living on the edges of society - each story is very different in terms of perspective and writing style.
There's also something timeless about these stories - they are distinctly modern and yet possess something ancient and familiar. Like Diving Belles, it's a book I can't wait to read again.
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