I can’t believe it’s almost five years since Nicola Smith stayed in with me here to chat about her debut novel A Degree of Uncertainty. I’m delighted to welcome Nicola back today to celebrate 13 Cornish Ghost Stories that she has contributed to with a superb guest post.

I confess 13 Cornish Ghost Stories had completely passed me by until I was ‘chatting’ with another contributor, Liz Fenwick, about it recently. With the nights getting noticeably darker, it seems the perfect time to take a closer look.

13 Cornish Ghost Stories is available for purchase here.

13 Cornish Ghost Stories

Cornwall is the perfect setting for tales, myths, and legends. The wild moors, the granite, the clay, the rebellious sea, and flat calm coves make the county a vast and inspirational canvas. The starry nights, needle-sharp gorse, and windswept tors and carns provide perfect backdrops to eerie full moons and ghostly goings-on. Mischievous piskies dance across our landscape, while the spectres of the past, both real and imagined, haunt our memories and our dreams.

There are new stories to be told around every corner, across every ley line, behind every menhir, and in the rocks and caves that litter our shores. Another 13 are already emerging from the mists….

Cornwall: riding a phantasmic wave

A Guest Post by Nicola Smith

As Elfy Scott wrote in The Guardian in January this year, “It feels as if ghosts are suddenly having a moment, a strange little resurgence into the mainstream. I think ghosts may be in vogue.”[1] She cites Ghost Story, a “wildly compelling” seven-part series hosted on podcast platform, Wondery as an example of their current popularity.

But has this slightly unsettling genre ever gone out of fashion? As Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black once said, “ghost stories are a way of exploring the boundaries between life and death, between the known and the unknown, between order and chaos”[2]. Surely such things will forever be a preoccupation of mankind?

Of course, there will always be doubters and sceptics, believers and evangelists (and even those who outwardly rubbish the notion yet inwardly wonder at strange noises in the night). And for this reason, there is a ghost story for every bent, yet many readers have preconceived ideas of what constitutes a ghost story. But there is no single definition.

Stories of such spirits can be enlightening, thought provoking and even amusing. Of course, they can also be spine-chilling. The new anthology I have been lucky enough to be a part of embodies all these adjectives. 13 Cornish Ghost Stories brings to life original ghostly tales from all over the county, from an ancient pub in the windblown far west of Cornwall to the desolate plains of Bodmin Moor and the capricious light of St Ives, not to mention a storm-lashed Penryn.

Cornwall, it seems, is a perfect setting for a ghost story. From the former inmate who haunts Bodmin Jail to the young woman who still roams the grounds of Falmouth’s Pendennis Castle, the county is synonymous with ‘true’ ghost stories. Its tumultuous history is alive with tales of pirates, smugglers and tragic historical events, while its dramatic, brooding and often isolated land and seascapes provide a fitting backdrop for many mysterious happenings.

Each original story in 13 Cornish Ghost Stories has been conceived by a writer either born in Cornwall or based in Cornwall, each one familiar with the county’s nuanced ways and changing moods, as well as its hidden paths and coves, its pockets of forgotten moorland; its concealed treasures.

Cornwall allows the writer’s imagination to run riot. It is an animating spirit that fuels the creative mind, giving rise to a profusion of colourful tales, legends, anecdotes and stories that live long in the memory. Done well, a Cornish ghost story puts the reader at the heart of its dramatic land and seascape, transporting them to another world…in every sense.

Ghost stories might well be having a moment, and I urge dubious readers to open their minds to otherworldy tales. As Scott says, “…for so many of us, stories of the paranormal can be a strange, exciting and decadent activity, like buying oysters to eat in your own house.”

What could be more Cornish than that?

[1] The Guardian

[2] Susan Hill

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What indeed? Thanks so much Nicola. Not only does this make me want to read 13 Cornish Ghost Stories immediately, it also makes me want to jump in the motorhome and head to Cornwall!

About Nicola K. Smith

Nicola K Smith is a freelance journalist based in Cornwall. She contributes to a range of titles including The Times, guardian.co.uk, Coast magazine and BBC Countryfile. She has just written her first novel, inspired by life in her home town of Falmouth, and set in a fictional Cornish town…

To find out more about Nicola, visit her website, or follow her on Twitter/X @NicolaKSmith740 and on Instagram @nicolaksmith740. You’ll also find Nicola on Facebook.

My enormous thanks to Lisa Shakespeare for sending me a surprise copy of The Inheritance by Cauvery Madhavan. I am delighted to share my review today.

Published by Hope Road on 19th September, The Inheritance is available in the usual places including directly from the publisher here.

The Inheritance

It’s 1986 and 29-year-old Marlo O’Sullivan of London-Irish stock has just found out that his sister is his mother. To steady his life, he moves to Glengarriff, to a cottage he has inherited, in the stunning Beara Peninsula. When a neighbour dies unexpectedly, Marlo takes over his minibus service to Cork. There is nothing regular about the regulars on the bus – especially Sully, a non-verbal 7 year old, who goes nowhere but does the journey back and forth every day, on his own. Marlo is landed with this a strange but compassionate arrangement, fashioned to give the child’s mother respite from his care. Sully’s obsession with an imaginary friend in the ancient oak forests of Glengarriff slowly unveils its terrible secrets – a 400-hundred-year-old tragedy revels itself.

My Review of The Inheritance

Marlo has inherited a cottage in Beara.

The Inheritance is a wonderful story that weaves the past and recent history into a tale of love, acceptance, forgiveness and belonging. I was completely captivated by it.

Cauvery Madhavan’s writing is beautiful. She depicts the wild attraction of Ireland to perfection so that she places her readers right in the heart of her settings. The Beara surroundings are every bit as much a character in The Inheritance as any of the people. The sound of Stevie bellowing, the colour of spilt blood, the touch of a hand and so on are simple, but carefully crafted, examples of how The Inheritance appeals to the senses and consequently becomes far more than the sum of its parts. It’s a magnificent book. I adored the naturalistic dialogue too, and the change in tone relating to the sections set in the early 1600s feels authentic and captivating.

The Inheritance is so difficult to categorise. There’s history steeped right into the landscape, and a sense of mystery with a touch of the supernatural through Sully that is realistic and totally believable. Religion, superstition and ritual all add layers of interest, and these aspects are frequently created with fond and gentle ribbing of the characters like Assumpta, so that The Inheritance feels written with, as well as about, love, tolerance and understanding. The brutality of the historical realism is balanced brilliantly by the humour and different forms of love in the more modern sections. Equally, this is a romance too. Consequently, The Inheritance appeals to a wide audience and is successful on every level. 

What is so completely engaging is the sense of community. The people here all know one another’s business, and the area is filled with long memories, petty rivalries and fierce loyalties so that I finished The Inheritance feeling, like Marlo, as if I’d been plunged head first into a real place with little to prepare me. Both Marlo and Kitty have strong reasons to find themselves on the edge of social acceptability, and yet they are also the heart of the narrative. The way in which the community is described means that every single character is unforgettable, vivid and absolutely true to life. I loved them all.

I loved, too, the echoing ripples of history and kinship that link past and present. Cauvery Madavan is literally giving voice to the mute, the ordinary and the forgotten in a powerful and affecting narrative. 

I completely lost my heart to The Inheritance because it is part of the rich, varied and engrossing culture of storytelling that those influenced by Ireland seem to achieve so effortlessly. I am delighted to find there are other Cauvery Madavan books to discover, because she is a writer with heart whose story held me transfixed and who demonstrates with warmth and understanding how letting go of the past enhances our present. Don’t miss this one. It’s glorious.

About Cauvery Madhavan

Cauvery Madhavan was born and educated in India. She worked as a copywriter in her hometown of Chennai (formerly Madras). Cauvery moved to Ireland over three decades years ago and has been in love with the country ever since. Her other books are: Paddy Indian, The Uncoupling and The Tainted. 

She lives with her husband and three children in beautiful County Kildare.

For further information, visit Cauvery’s website, follow her on Twitter/X @CauveryMadhavan and find her on Instagram.

Having spectacularly failed to read and review The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne by Freya North in time for the hardback release in February, I am delighted to share my review today well ahead of the paperback release. My enormous thanks to Emma Dowson at edpr for sending me a signed copy of The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne all those months ago.

I cannot believe it’s nine years since I reviewed Freya’s The Turning Point and The Way Back Home when I very first began blogging. You’ll find those reviews here.

The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne is available now in other formats and will be released in paperback on 12th September 2024. Published by Welbeck it is available for purchase through the links here.

The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne

When your present meets your past, what do you take with you – and what do you leave behind?

Eadie Browne is a quirky kid living in a small town where nothing much happens. Bullied at school, she muddles her way through the teenage years with best friends Celeste and Josh until University takes them their separate ways.

Arriving in Manchester as a student in the late 1980s, Eadie experiences a novel freedom and it’s intoxicating. As the city embraces the dizzying euphoria of Rave counterculture, Eadie is swept along, ignoring danger and reality. Until, one night, her past comes hurtling at her with consequences she could never have imagined.

Now, as the new millennium approaches, Eadie is thirty with a marriage in tatters, travelling back to the town of her birth for a funeral she can’t quite comprehend. As she journeys from the North to the South, from the present to the past, Eadie contemplates all that was then and all that is now – and the loose ends that must be tied before her future can unfold.

My Review of The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne

Eadie is growing up.

The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne is just wonderful. It’s an absolute love song to who we are as humans, to our frailties, our hopes, our fears and our dreams. I loved it.

In essence, the plot is relatively gentle as the story travels through Eadie’s childhood memories whilst she’s on a journey with her husband in 1999. I loved the gradual unfurling of why Eadie is making that journey and how her past life has led her to this point. It adds a little mystery that is engaging and interesting. 

What is so utterly beautiful and moving about how Freya North writes is the way she manages to depict with absolute perfection the different stages of Eadie’s life. Eadie’s home might be somewhat unconventional, but her early childhood and teenage school years are absolutely those anyone can recognise. As a result it feels as if we’re reading about a much loved and missed friend from our own past. I thought the exploration of her marriage was emotionally exquisite. The depth of love, and the ease with which life can intervene and make us neglect those we care for most, is conveyed by Freya North with tenderness and reality. 

Eadie is intricately drawn. Her self-delusion, the selfishness and uncertainty of her youth, her gradual maturity and the realisation of what constitutes friendship, belonging and home, all combine into a character whose vivid personality leaps from the page. And through Eadie and her reactions we come to know and understand her parents Terry and Jill and her other friends. Each one feels true to life.

But this is a tale about more than just Eadie, marvellous as she is. It’s a warm, sensitive and totally absorbing example of life. The Patricks and Rosses of the world can be found in any location and through reading about them we learn humanity and compassion, even as we are entertained. Freya North weaves the strands that bind the characters together with themes of trust, family, education, friendship, crime, poverty and society in such a rich tapestry that it feels as if the people and events in The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne could happen in any school, town, nightclub or university. And it isn’t just the imaginative aspects of the book that are so convincing. Also woven in are historical and geographical strands, from music to national and international events, that add reality, depth and authenticity.

I’ve long loved Freya North’s writing and it has been far too long since I read her. The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne has proven just what I’ve been missing. I thought this narrative was utterly brilliant. It has earned a place on my list of books of the year because it is a book about Eadie Browne, but also one about you and me. Eadie might be looking for her place in the world but she helped me find my place too. Don’t miss this one.

About Freya North

For more information, visit Freya’s website, follow her on Twitter/X @freya_north and find Freya on Instagram and Facebook.