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.
Nothing is as it seems in Meet Me at the Surface, which is reminiscent of Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing, but with a flair that is unusual in a first book. It’s a tale of bargains made and debts recalled, the supernatural hovering above the narrative like a ghostly marsh light, drawing us further and further in. Transported to an eerie, unearthly realm that feels both modern and out of time, we find ourselves almost as ill at ease as Merryn herself.
Unapologetically queer (in both senses of the word), this story of grief, love and mental illness unravels slowly. The pace means that in lesser hands it might founder, but Matthews’s writing is brilliantly assured. Skipping effortlessly between past and present, she wields language powerfully and brutally, yet with a lightness of touch that is deceptively seductive. It’s hard to believe it’s the work of a first-time novelist.
• Meet Me at the Surface by Jodie Matthews is published by 4th Estate (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
