Appropriately enough, Meet Me at the Surface, an electrifying debut from Manchester-based but Cornish-born Jodie Matthews, dives deep. Heavily influenced by her place of birth, and in particular its folklore, the author plunges us into a twilight world of whispered secrets and otherworldly goings-on. Characters – some human, some quite possibly not – rise to the surface of the narrative then fall beneath, their shifting motives always remaining tantalisingly out of reach. Above all hovers the enigmatic Pedri – a strange word in a notebook that might refer to any number of things, none of them good – and in the middle of everything is Bodmin’s murky, mysterious lake, Dozmary Pool.
Anchoring us throughout is Merryn, who having escaped Bodmin Moor a year previously returns to its wilds for the memorial service of ex-girlfriend Claud. There she finds a community frozen in fear and clinging to superstition. Her aunt, who helped her mother raise her, has taken to sealing the windows of their ancient farmhouse with a homemade concoction of rotten eels mixed with lard. But to keep out what? The villagers are hunting at night, but again their quarry is a mystery. A notebook, discovered by Merryn beneath an old chest of drawers, reveals long-forgotten myths that somehow link to Claud, and the date of the memorial service seems constantly to shift.
