It was a tragedy that sent novelist Wyl Menmuir to the “demi-island” of Cornwall, with its long and sinuous shoreline. In 2011, his first child was stillborn and he went with his wife down to the wild north coast of the county to escape. It was winter, and cold, and yet he walked into the ocean. “And for a few moments the grief wasn’t silenced so much as confronted by a wall of deafening white noise muting its constant scream. The sea’s great indifference was a comfort in a way I can’t easily explain and it continues to play its part.”
Now, in The Draw of the Sea, Menmuir, whose 2016 Booker-longlisted novel The Many was set in a fishing village in Cornwall, has turned his focus on the place the sea plays in Britain’s collective consciousness, the way we have been shaped by the waters that surround us. He intercuts his own story – he moved to Cornwall in 2013 and he and his family now live a watery existence, swimming, surfing, rockpooling and beachcombing – with a broader consideration of the lives of a motley collection of seafarers.
