The North Shore: a stunning gothic debut

(Hardback)

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'An enticing, wrack-like tangle of myth, mystery and the power of the sea and its stories' Kiran Millwood Hargrave

'Brilliant: singular, unsettling and mutative' Rosie Andrews, author of THE LEVIATHAN

You don't pass through the North Shore on the way to anywhere else: it is the end of the road. The village was like many along that wild coast; inhabited by those who had always lived there, and always would.

The residents know nature's tempestuous ways. They batten down the hatches when the storms rip through, and they clear the debris together in the aftermath.

But the morning after one particularly ferocious storm, something is washed up on the beach that has never appeared before. Something that opens the question of what nature, and the North Shore, are truly capable of.

The North Shore is both a powerful story of transformation and a coming-of-age tale. It speaks of the mysteries that lie between the land and the water and the ways in which we use myths and folklore to understand the strangeness of the world.

Reviews

Brilliant: singular, unsettling and mutative, combining the mythical and the grotesque with sublime writing and an intense fascination with the natural world -- Rosie Andrews, bestselling author of THE LEVIATHAN
THE NORTH SHORE is a haunting evocation of place told by those who rightly love and fear it. An enticing, wrack-like tangle of myth, mystery and the power of the sea and its stories. -- Kiran Millwood Hargrave
The North Shore conjures the atmosphere of the Norfolk coast with unnerving beauty. This is an unusual and enthralling novel: the strange events of this story have haunted me. -- Naomi Booth
A mysterious and compelling tale, I really enjoyed it. Landscape and memory shift as though colluding in unsettling the past. Myth competes with truth for attention. The land is a medium for holding or expressing powers we cannot hope to understand. -- Lulu Allison
As eerie, bleak and magical as the Norfolk coast itself. An intriguing narrative of twists and turns, stories and myths, truth and fable. Tufnell has captured and distilled the very nature of nostalgia, transforming it into a gripping piece of work that pulls you in, and won't let you go -- Nick Bradley, author of The Cat and the City

Author Bio

Ben Tufnell is a writer and curator based in London. Previously a curator at Tate, he is a founding Director of Parafin, an independent art gallery. He has published widely on modern and contemporary art, focussing particularly on artists and art forms that engage with ideas of land, landscape and place. The North Shore, which draws speculatively on a childhood in rural North Norfolk, is his debut novel.