Joe’s Norfolk town might be an idyllic place. Marshes stretch to the sea, eels wriggle up creeks and oystercatchers stalk the mudflats. Here “mirrored pools … burst with sky”, and the tide “comes and goes, like one huge breath”, transforming water into land and land into water.
Yet Ransom’s powerful debut is as bucolic as a fish hook through the cheek. Fishermen scrape a living near rusted tankers and burnt-out cars, the water below them “the same filthy grey” as the sky above. Feelings are bottled up and families strain with violence and resentment. Almost everything is old, battered or rotten. Prosperity and progress feel a long way away; the internet barely gets a mention.
