Novelist · Six Books · Portland, Oregon
Quiet books about loud lives.
I write literary fiction about people who leave, and the places that don't let them. The Salt Line — my sixth novel — is out now.
I write literary fiction about people who leave, and the places that don't let them. The Salt Line — my sixth novel — is out now.
Thirty years after she left, Nell Hargreave comes back to a coastal town that has been quietly disappearing into the sea. Her mother's house is still standing. Almost everything else has gone.
A novel about erosion — of coastlines, of memory, and of the stories families agree to tell each other.
The opening of The Salt Line, set as it appears in the book. Use the arrows or your keyboard.
The road came down to the water the way it always had, and then it kept going. Nell stopped the car where the tarmac gave out and sat with the engine running, looking at the place the last row of houses had been.
There were seven of them once. She had known who lived in every one. Now there was a low grey shelf of rubble and, beyond it, the sea doing what it had been doing patiently for three hundred years.
She had expected to feel something larger than this. What she felt was the particular embarrassment of being a woman in a hire car at the end of a road, in a coat that was wrong for the weather.
Her mother's house stood a quarter of a mile back, on the high side of the lane, and it had the smug look of a building that had outlasted its neighbours. The gate was off one hinge. Someone had cut the grass — recently, and badly, the way you cut grass for a house that is about to be sold.
Nell let herself in with a key she had carried in three countries and never once used.
Inside, the air had the cold, mineral smell of a place that has been closed a long time. There was post on the mat, and a note in handwriting she didn't recognise: Sorry for your loss. Milk in the fridge. — B.
She found the milk. She found, too, that her mother had left the kitchen exactly as she'd left it in every year Nell could remember: cups hanging on hooks, the tea towel folded in thirds, the radio tuned to a station that had stopped broadcasting in 2009.
The only new thing in the room was a cardboard box on the table with her own name on it, in capitals, underlined twice.
Nell looked at it for a long moment. Then she went and stood at the window instead, and watched the light go off the water, and thought about how long a person can stay at a window before it becomes a decision.
It was almost dark when she opened it.
Inside were forty-one letters, held together with a rubber band that had perished into two pieces, and every one of them was addressed to her, at the addresses she'd had in Bristol, and Lisbon, and Halifax, and Bristol again.
Not one of them had been sent.
Chapter One continues for another nine pages.
Get the Book“A novelist of unusual patience. Nothing here is hurried, and nothing here is wasted.”The Times Literary Supplement
“Marsh has spent twenty years writing about the same fifteen miles of coast, and has yet to repeat herself once.”The Observer
“I finished it on a Tuesday and thought about it every day for a fortnight.”Booksellers' Choice
I was born in a coastal town that is now half the size it was, and I have been writing about it, in one disguise or another, ever since. Six books in, I have stopped pretending this is a coincidence.
My first novel was published when I was thirty-four, after eleven years of writing in the two hours before work. I mention that only because nobody told me it was allowed to take that long.
I teach one term a year on the MA at Ashfield, and I read for the Corran Prize. I live in Portland with my partner and a bad-tempered lurcher.
For rights and permissions, please contact my agent — details below. I answer reader letters myself, though slowly.
Festivals, readings and bookshop evenings. Ticketing is handled by each venue.
In conversation with Amara Osei, followed by a signing.
Reading from The Salt Line, with Q&A.
“Writing the same place twice” — free, no ticket needed.
Panel: the coastal novel after climate change.
New books, event dates, and occasionally something I've read and can't stop thinking about. No marketing, no giveaways, no “hey friend”.
Unsubscribe in one click. I never share the list with anyone, including my publisher.Sometimes, and always by video rather than in person — I'd never get any writing done otherwise. I do around one a month, usually for clubs reading the paperback. Ask through the contact details below and give me a few dates.
Through Corran Books in Portland, who hold signed stock of everything in print and ship internationally. I don't sell books myself, and I'd rather your money went to a bookshop than to a marketplace.
I can't, I'm afraid — not out of unhelpfulness but because unsolicited manuscripts create real legal problems for a working novelist. What I can do is point you at the Ashfield MA, and at three agents who are open to submissions; both are listed on the events page each September.
I'm about a third of the way into the seventh, which by my usual pace means 2029. The newsletter is the first place it'll be announced, and I try not to talk about a book until it's finished enough to survive being talked about.
The geography is real; the towns are not. Salt Head, Ardnave and Coombe Marsh are composites of about five actual places along the same stretch of coast. People from that coast recognise all of it and none of it, which is the intention.
Yes, and free of charge for state schools within reach of Portland. Sixth form and above — the books aren't suitable for younger readers.
Ruth Kelleher, Kelleher & Vane
rights@kellehervane.example
Ashgrove Press
publicity@ashgrove.example
Booking enquiries go through my agent. Please include dates, format and whether travel is covered.
Letters are welcome and always answered, though it can take a season. Write care of Ashgrove Press, 14 Bell Yard, London.
Corran Books, Portland — they ship anywhere.
