The Cove

For more than fifty years Beth Lynch has been drawn back, over and over again, to a rocky nook on the North Cornwall coast. Her earliest memories of the place are of idyllic trips on family holidays. But as she grows older she begins to feel a unique and powerful connection with the cove. This slippery place of sheer edges and ledges, strange rock formations and eroding, tumbling slate becomes her place of safety from childhood anxiety and, later, the terror of school bullying.Around the time of her parents' deaths, odd things start to happen at the cove. Is it the cove, or is it her? The place that she thought she knew inside out becomes increasingly strange. She discovers that her wild cove has a very populated past. A new acquaintanceship with the place begins, shared with her husband, and friends, and the farmers who live there and befriend her. But maybe the cove does not want to be known. And, one day, in her safe recess, she will find herself in danger and come close to death.By telling the story of an ineluctable relationship with a place, this literary memoir tells a story of human relationships. It is a lyrical meditation on fear; on what happens when our fears come true; and on ways of being in danger. On mortality, and how we do or don't take leave of our dead. On haunting and being haunted: on memory, and love.