Untitled
Published on 17. July 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-0-00-819348-5 (ISBN)
Description
From the award-winning writer of Weathering, Diving Belles and The Sing of The Shore, a luminous novel, set in Cornwall, about secrets and memory, things lost and found - and the tidal pull of home.
It was Tiny who found it. There was something at the edge of the beach, something long and tangled in the seaweed. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't. She should go closer and check. Everything was moving: wind gusting, waves tipping over and sucking back over the stones. But over where the thing was it seemed very still and very quiet.
When a dead body washes up on a Cornish beach, two children are the only ones to see it before it is taken again by the sea. But its memory will haunt the children - and those who live in the village - over the coming years, stirring up gossip and guilt, love and betrayal and connecting them all in ways they never imagined.
It was Tiny who found it. There was something at the edge of the beach, something long and tangled in the seaweed. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't. She should go closer and check. Everything was moving: wind gusting, waves tipping over and sucking back over the stones. But over where the thing was it seemed very still and very quiet.
When a dead body washes up on a Cornish beach, two children are the only ones to see it before it is taken again by the sea. But its memory will haunt the children - and those who live in the village - over the coming years, stirring up gossip and guilt, love and betrayal and connecting them all in ways they never imagined.
Reviews / Votes
Praise for The Sing of the Shore:'Heart-thumping miniature thrillers. There's an uncanny, delicate quality to much of Wood's prose that belies how difficult this kind of writing is to pull off' Guardian
'She constructs a vivid, uneasy fictional geography of modern Cornwall' Jonathan McAloon, Spectator
'The Sing of the Shore shows Lucy Wood at the top of her considerable game. Best enjoyed with the woodburner stoked up and hail lashing the windows, these discreetly linked stories conjure a wholly original Cornish Gothic: now sad, now funny, now so profoundly creepy you'll check that dark corner of the room before continuing' Patrick Gale, author of Notes from an Exhibition
'Rain-drenched, windswept and haunted - this is how I felt as I read The Sing of the Shore. Wood's is a Cornwall filled with uneasy spirits, both living and dead, but that also welcomed me in with wry gossip and knowing looks. Absorbing, beautiful, and deeply uncanny, this collection soaked me through and will linger in my bones' Zoe Gilbert, author of Folk
'The sounds of the sea and the weather ripple through these eerie, exceptional stories set in a Cornwall that is, by turns, moody and melancholy, winder-filled and woebegone' Eithne Farry, Daily Mail
'The stories of The Sing of the Shore continue to resonate long after you have closed its covers, and form a remarkably fine collection, beautiful and unsettling' Shiny New Books
'These haunting, elegiac stories capture bleak moments of unfulfilled lives' S Magazine, Sunday Express
'Mesmerising short-story collection...the writing is so good it is hard to resist' Leaf Arbuthnot, Sunday Times
'Elegant new collection of stories ... Every figure is wonderfully observed, their lives made poignant and moving in a few brief pages' Lamorna Ash, TLS
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
HarperCollins Publishers
Product notice
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
270 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-00-819348-5 (9780008193485)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Lucy Wood is the critically acclaimed author of two collections of short stories, Diving Belles and The Sing of the Shore, and a novel, Weathering (Bloomsbury, 2016). She has been longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, twice-shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize, and was runner-up in the BBC National Short Story Award. She has also received a Betty Trask Award, a Somerset Maugham Award and the Holyer an Gof Award. Weathering was named as one of The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2016. She lives in Cornwall.