Undercurrent

LoveReading Says

We’ve long loved Natasha Carthew’s extraordinary writing, and her Undercurrent memoir cannot be more highly recommended. Raw, honest, and written in the mesmerising language of nature, it delivers exactly what its subtitle promises — A Cornish Memoir of Nature, Poverty and Resistance.

Carthew’s writing rages like the ocean as it voices the brutal realities of rural poverty. It also swells with love for her mother, Cornwall and being Celtic, alongside extolling the transformative power of writing. As such, this is a book for people who love nature, and for those fascinated by the emancipatory power of creativity. It’s also a book for those who want to understand contemporary Britain and social inequity from a rural working-class perspective. In short, it’s a gloriously stirring memoir that bangs a loud drum for neglected rural working-class communities.

“You’ve got to get over the unfairness of it, because it is unfair: absolutely nobody fucking cares about poor country folk — they don’t care about you, your background, or your lack of prospects”. To some extent, this excerpt cuts to the core of Undercurrent, in which the author shares her experience of growing up poor in a Cornish village that displayed “a juxtaposition of old and new, rich and poor, of pretty fisherman’s cottages that line the coastal street, and the bullying millionaire houses that dominate the high north and easterly hills”.

With such social inequities playing out around her, Carthew grew up with a violent father. But, “If my father was the incoming storm, my mother’s love was a deep, comforting wheel of warm water”, “an undercurrent of calm, beautiful, familiar tidal water”. The person who told her, “You’re a clever girl, Natasha. Gonna be a writer someday”. Alongside sharing personal coming of age stories, including summers of love, homophobia, and finding salvation in “words that would help lift me above the undercurrent”, Carthew relates alarming facts about the realities of contemporary rural life — food and fuel poverty. Low wages and the disproportionately high cost of living. The debilitating effects of tourism and second home-owners. The fact that “rurality and isolation are used as weapons by abusers”.

Swelling with nature, creativity and magnificent resilience, Undercurrent is remarkably resonant. For more inspiration from Natasha Carthew, read our interview.

Joanne Owen

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