The Thing On The Shore by Tom Fletcher.

 A review by Jeanette Greaves.

 The Thing On The Shore is Tom Fletcher’s second novel, another solid contribution to a body of work that already includes several short stories and two Nightjar Press chapbooks. If you have read The Leaping, his first novel, you will find yourself on familiar ground with The Thing On The Shore.

Now, that second novel thing … is it a ‘Part Two’ or is it a stand alone? Does it veer off in a different direction or will readers of The Leaping feel at home? Be assured that you don’t have to have read The Leaping before you dive into The Thing On The Shore, and if you’re left feeling a bit bereft and ready for more after finishing the second novel, then you can go and treat yourself to the first one without worrying greatly about vital spoilers.

Although the second novel isn’t a sequel, it is set in the same bleak universe of joyless desperation, petty cruelties and economic entrapment as the first. A single character unites the two books, the vile Artemis Black, henchman and toady of the big corporation, Interext, which is the real villain of the piece.

The novel is set in West Cumbria and Fletcher ensures that the beach at Drigg, the bars and pubs of Whitehaven, the background presence of Sellafield and the ever changing sea all take their places as vital elements of the tale.

As in The Leaping, this novel begins with a flashback to childhood. A young boy, Arthur, stands in his bedroom watching the steady rhythm of flashes of the Whitehaven lighthouse as his parents quarrel downstairs.  He watches the lighthouse as it keeps ships and sailors safe, as it fails to keep his mother safe. Nothing will ever be the same.

In the next scene, innocence dies again, and from the top of the lighthouse to the bottom of the sea, Tom Fletcher’s steady prose first leads us, then drags us with unforgiving steadiness to the horror that awaits.

Throughout the book, we return to those moments of shocking loss, as innocence is preyed upon, love becomes a burden, and a man’s protectiveness of his unborn child is the route that evil takes to corrupt him.

A recurring theme is ‘the weekend’, a period of respite from the misery of the call centre and the weight of Artemis Black’s psychotic tyranny. Monday morning in the grey call centre cells follow far too quickly on the heels of desperately drunken Friday evenings in the pub.

Fletcher has a fast growing reputation as a great story teller, and in this novel he builds upon his previous work by giving us strong and well defined characters to empathise with. The now adult Arthur and his colleague Yasmin work in a call centre by day. By night, and in their precious weekends, they do all they can to forget the customer service work that they feel is bleaching away their humanity. Bony is their friend, a remote individual who finds the eponymous Thing on the beach at Drigg, and brings the rotting relic into the heart of the story, informing the essence of decay corruption that seeps through the entire novel.

As the story progresses, the characters become enmeshed in a plot of staggeringly mundane and petty evil that dirties everything it touches, a plot that has taken years to come to fruition, that has already left a swathe of misery and destruction in its wake, and which threatens the lives and souls of our protagonists. As the darkness slowly reveals itself, they come to realise that the danger is real and they must act.

The Thing On The Shore is a disquieting book, telling of the loss of hope and dignity in the name of profit. It is of its time, and Fletcher is showing more and more that he can speak for his generation. He has proved that he can write a classic short story, and with The Thing On The Shore, he shows a growing mastery of the novel format. I look forward to his third novel.

~

Tom Fletcher lives and works in Manchester. 
You can read his blogs at

http://endistic.wordpress.com and http://fellhouse.wordpress.com

His latest project is Station Stories www.stationstories.com .

 Jeanette Greaves‘ previous work has ranged from quality controlling the exact shade of peach in recycled toilet roll, to analysing the effectiveness of reed beds in the treatment of Yorkshire’s sewage. She now writes about werewolves. She blogs at http://www.bloginbasket.com .

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 5th, 2011 at 10:00 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.