Recommendations: Week of 10/14/24
The Cornish Gothic: smuggling, apples, and secrets.
If you’ve encountered the Cornish Gothic before, the most likely place is through the BBC television series Poldark, in which a broody, annoying man returns to Cornwall from fighting in the Revolutionary War to find that his father has died and his inheritance is all topsy turvy and that the girl he loved has married someone else. Poldark is a show that was popular among the historical adaptations set for a while until it made some unfortunate character choices and lost a good portion of its audience (including myself). But while I was watching it, I got a good sense for what the subgenre “Cornish Gothic” means. Cornwall is the southern-most region of England. It sticks out dramatically into the Atlantic, surrounded on three sides by water. If you are to take Poldark’s word for it, Cornwall is famous for a few things: mines that regularly collapse and kill the poor, smuggling brandy from France, and a lot of extra “y”s in people’s names. Upon further study of the below novels, I would add: apple orchards, remote manors crumbling into the sea, King Arthur, and faerie-based superstition.
Cornwall has all the elements necessary to produce a localized kind of gothic fiction. It is remote, it is steeped in history and folklore and legend, and it has a real history of tragedy related to both smuggling and mining. The below novels all take Cornwall as their setting and build unique gothic stories upon that foundation.
As a note, “pen” means hill in Cornish, hence all the pen- etc. names.
Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier: Du Maurier is most famous for her novel Rebecca but she wrote a number of other books and short stories, all swirling in the same gothic pool. Jamaica Inn is set in the early 19th century in a remote part of Cornwall (so really really remote) and follows Mary Yellan, a young woman sent to live with a distant aunt when her mother passes. Mary quickly realizes that she’s stepped into a world she doesn’t understand. Her uncle Joss is cruel and quick to anger and keeps Mary in the dark about the true business of Jamaica Inn (it’s smuggling), the lodging house he runs. When Mary learns the truth, she gets swept up in a tragic story that begun long before she arrived. Mary has to learn to trust Jem, Joss’ brother, as he’s the only one in the whole family who seems bothered by the whole “we’re smugglers” family business. But can she really trust him? Can she trust anyone, out there on the moors, all alone?
There are a couple adaptations of this worth watching, including a very early Hitchcock and a 2014 BBC miniseries. No apples in this one, but the moors are terrifying.
Bride of Pendorric by Victoria Holt: This novel follows Favel, a young woman living in Capri in the 1960s with her artist father when she meets Roc Pendorric, a brooding Cornish landowner who sweeps her off her feet, possibly murders her father, then takes her back to his crumbling mansion in Cornwall. There, she learns that there is a curse placed upon women who marry into this family from outside Cornwall and she is the next “Bride of Pendorric” destined to suffer its consequences. As Roc becomes more distant, and potentially less faithful, Favel begins to feel more and more isolated and alone. This novel has everything that marks a classic Holt novel: crumbling mansions, creepy children, class conflict between old and new money, potential unfaithfulness, a hero who cannot express his emotions, and a heroine who endures until she overcomes. Holt wrote several novels that take place in Cornwall, including Mistress of Mellyn, which I would also recommend, which also features a smuggling plotline. Holt’s novels run along familiar grooves, but she had a formula that worked and inspired many future writers.
Come for the mansion and the crumbling rocks splashing into the sea, stay for the potential ghosts.
The Curse of Penryth Hall by Jess Armstrong: While the first two novels I reviewed above are from 1936 and 1963 respectively, these two novels are from the last few years, showing a potential revival in the subgenre. The Curse of Penryth Hall is the first in a new mystery series the follows Ruby Vaughn, a roaring 20s antiquarian bookseller and socialite/heiress who gets mixed up in a murder when she goes to drop off a chest of grimoires to a small town “Pellar.” A Pellar is something of a white witch or healer in Cornish mythology. Ruby doesn’t really believe in that sort of thing, but when she meets Ruan Kivell, the Pellar in question, she feels something start to stir within her. To complicate things further, her best friend and former lover, Tamsyn, is the wife of the local lord and while paying them a long-overdue call (filled with angst and heatbreak), Sir Edward is murdered. Ruby must team up with Ruan to figure out how he died, if it’s a curse, and how she can mend her broken heart. The long shadow of WWI hangs over every character in the novel, all of whom are trying to figure out how one goes back to regular life after such trauma and terror.
This book is a wonderful modern entry into the gothic romantic suspense genre, although it unfortunately does not feature any smuggling or mine collapses. There is, however, a murder in an apple orchard and multiple mentions of “piskies.”
The Governess of Penwythe Hall by Sarah E. Ladd: This final novel is more of a historical romance than a suspense, although the final act does involve chasing down some kidnapping smugglers on the moors. For the majority of the novel, it is a slow burn romance between Cordelia Greythorne, a young widow trying to escape her Cornish past, and Jac Trethewey, a Cornish landowner trying to simultaneously save his fortunes by starting an apple orchard and raise his dead brother’s five young children. Cordelia is the governess to those children and when her employer dies leaving them in the care of his estranged brother, she travels with them to Cornwall. Delia is from there, but her history is a tragic one. She married into a prominent family there, only to learn they were really a prominent smuggling family. After the loss of her infant child and her husband, Delia fled, leaving the Greythornes seeking her and the secrets she took with her. After returning to Cornwall, Delia finds herself falling in love with Penwythe and its kind owner Jac. But her past threatens to catch up with her and destroy the fragile new life she’s building.
This one has apples, smuggling, a crumbling house, and a chase across the moors. It is also the start of a series set in Cornwall, all of which are charming, thoughtful romances.