Beyond the picture postcards, Britain’s coastal communities are suffering.
Crowds flood the beaches during summer heatwaves but they quickly vanish again, leaving behind drifts of rubbish and unstable seasonal jobs. Seaside property is in high demand but affordable only for landlords and gentrifiers. The cost-of-living crisis and the ongoing pains of austerity trap those at the vulnerable edges of our nation in poverty.
Having grown up in rural Cornwall, Natasha Carthew leaves the county in search of a new home. Travelling the country and exploring the villages, towns and cities of our coast, she meets the people fighting to keep these places alive. With fierce compassion, she shares their voices and their stories.
Rough Edges is a rallying cry for the beauty and importance of our coast and its people.
PRAISE FOR UNDERCURRENT
‘A story of queer resistance, of community and of finding your own voice’
DAMIAN BARR
‘Important and beautifully lyrical’
THE TIMES
‘Haunting and powerful’
KATE MOSSE
Crowds flood the beaches during summer heatwaves but they quickly vanish again, leaving behind drifts of rubbish and unstable seasonal jobs. Seaside property is in high demand but affordable only for landlords and gentrifiers. The cost-of-living crisis and the ongoing pains of austerity trap those at the vulnerable edges of our nation in poverty.
Having grown up in rural Cornwall, Natasha Carthew leaves the county in search of a new home. Travelling the country and exploring the villages, towns and cities of our coast, she meets the people fighting to keep these places alive. With fierce compassion, she shares their voices and their stories.
Rough Edges is a rallying cry for the beauty and importance of our coast and its people.
PRAISE FOR UNDERCURRENT
‘A story of queer resistance, of community and of finding your own voice’
DAMIAN BARR
‘Important and beautifully lyrical’
THE TIMES
‘Haunting and powerful’
KATE MOSSE
Reviews
Rough Edges brings the reality of severe coastal poverty into sharp focus in an urgent and compassionate blend of candid memoir and compelling literary reportage. Natasha Carthew writes with an insight and an acuity of vision that few can match, and the messages of Rough Edges land with great integrity. Rough Edges unflinchingly scrutinises the systematic inequalities wrecking coastal communities and sets out a vision in which people in the 'salt belt' shorelines of these islands can thrive
Bracing, insightful and compassionate, the book shines a light on communities too often unseen and unheard (not least in coastal nature-writing narratives). As the child of immigrants, I was also heartened to read Natasha Carthew's moving plea for a borderless world. Rough Edges ought to be required reading for UK politicians across the spectrum
Natasha Carthew is a brilliant chronicler of life at the salty margins and Rough Edges is a forceful but compassionate polemic, delivered with her trademark robustly lyrical prose style. It deserves to be widely read - an important and original voice
A brilliant, eye-opening and moving investigation into the abandonment of Britain's coastal working class. Part paean to Natasha Carthew's own rural working class heritage, part searing critique of exploitation, greed and policy failure, this is essential reading for anyone who loves this country's seasides. There is much loss and sadness in these pages but ultimately the message is a powerful and hopeful one: it is possible for people to come together to fight for a fair and decent life for all
Candid, unflinching, brave. Natasha Carthew has distilled a year-long journey around the British coast and the hopes, challenges and histories of its working-class communities into a hugely important and passionate book. Set against a backdrop of buoyant, holidaying visitors and entrenched local poverty, this is a journey, ultimately, in search of home, connection and solidarity, a vital corrective to damaging cultural stereotypes and failed state policies. Rough Edges breaks a sensitive and authentic path towards a genuine understanding of what it means to be working class and to live on the precarious border between land and sea
Rough Edges is a true homage to Britain's working-class coastal communities. Having travelled from coastlines filled with shiny second homes to windswept estates teetering on the brink, Natasha Carthew offers heartfelt yet razor-sharp analysis of how those on the edges have been forgotten, ignored, and pushed aside. Beautifully written and passionately argued, Rough Edges is a must-read for anyone wanting to know just how badly the odds are stacked against these coasts' working-class communities, and what needs to change