two Cornwall book launches, eels and animal parts
In March 2024, Jodie Matthews launched her debut novel, Meet Me at the Surface, at bookshops across Cornwall. I hurried home with my copy, to find myself entranced in the coming days with the world of Bodmin moor that it evokes, with its eels, its folklore, its earthy sense of place, its uncanny everyday marvels.
At the end of that same month, I attended another book launch, this time of Twelve Stories for Twelve Sections: An Anthology of Short Fiction Inspired by Cornwall's Protected Landscape, edited by Gareth Rees. I was quite amazed to find eels again here, in the first story, by Luke Thompson, also set on Bodmin moor.
In between those two book launches, I had a blood test in Bodmin community hospital. I grew up in Bodmin until the age of 12, and never before knew about the eels in its moorland rivers; a further discovery, these decades later, on deciding to walk the streets around my old home after my blood test, was that in the local Jet garage, if you go in the shop, the shop where I would once get chewing gum, you can find the following along the shelves:
Non-filled Hooves 95p each
Duck Necks £1 each
Duck Feet 75p each
Cow's Ears £1.25 (Hair is a natural parasite remover and low in fat)
Pigs Ears £1.25 each
Giant Turkey Feet £2.25 each
Puffed White Pig snouts £1.10 each
My understanding is that these animal parts are for dogs to chew, and maybe other pets too. They are presumably the body parts that human animals don't want to eat, unwanted leftovers from a local abattoir--leftovers that once enabled the living animals to walk, to listen and hear.
Another thing the two books have in common is their depiction of a Cornwall that differs from 'beach Cornwall, magic Cornwall', as Matthews puts it (p.9). Coastal Cornwall is where we might expect to find seagulls and seals, rather than eels; where it is possible - for some - to buy expensive fish and chips, rather than hooves at 95p each. (These animal parts have not, to my knowledge, appeared like this in other towns in Cornwall like Falmouth, Truro, and Lostwithiel, coastal or riverside towns sometimes described as 'posh.') The 'sunnier, brighter, richer' Cornwall is more widely known and commercial, not least in attracting tourists. It is a romanticised Cornwall that more usually sells books; not a Cornwall where it is almost always raining. These two new books contribute to a countercurrent of literature that is grounded in rich layers of history and a fuller geography of Cornwall, a place that reflects far vaster inequalities.
(Having taken leave of my academic post a couple of summers ago, I'm wondering about how my reading has been changing, in part without the need to produce for the Research Excellence Framework. I am also interested in the abundance of literature from and about Cornwall. I am keen to experiment and I wonder about keeping some kind of record; this may be followed by a #2.)