Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town

Lamorna Ash

Bloomsbury

£16.99

Lamorna Ash was named for a small Cornish village beyond Penzance and returns to explore. It’s not herself she travels to discover but the working fishing community of Newlyn, ashore and afloat. Eight days on a trawler gives her insight into the fishermen’s work and the existential experience of being at sea. Ash learns to gut. She cannot believe fish do not feel pain but must still do this job. ‘I let out a cry and stab the ray in the heart.’ Her title comes from a poem by Elizabeth Bishop. There’s high-writing and high-thinking here but also harsh realities and nights in the pub. ‘Don’t romanticise us,’ say the fishermen – and she doesn’t. Deeply perceptive.