Undercurrent: A Cornish memoir of poverty and resilience, shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards 2023
About this ebook
'Important and beautifully lyrical'
THE TIMES
'A fierce, urgent memoir'
AMY-JANE BEER
To grow up in rural poverty is to fight for life before you can walk. Natasha Carthew was born into a world that sat alongside picture-postcard Cornwall - one where second homes took the sea view of council properties, summer months shifted the course of people's lives, and wealth converged with poverty on sandy beaches.
In the rockpools and hedgerows of the natural world, Natasha found solace in the wild landscape, and a means of escape in her mobile library. In Undercurrent she retraces the cliff paths of her childhood, determined to make sense of an upbringing shaped by political neglect and a life defined by the beauty of nature.
_____
'A story of queer resistance, of community and of finding your own voice'
DAMIAN BARR
'By turns marvellous, moving and mesmerising'
ANITA SETHI
'A proud, defiant account'
CAUGHT BY THE RIVER
'Haunting and powerful'
KATE MOSSE
'Fierce and honest'
BBC COUNTRYFILE MAGAZINE
About the author
Natasha Carthew is a Cornish working-class writer and poet. She is the author of ten books, mostly recently Undercurrent: A Cornish memoir of poverty, nature and resilience (2023), which was shortlisted for the non-fiction prize at the inaugural Nero Book Awards. She has also contributed to Hag: Forgotten Folk Tales (2020) and Women on Nature: 100+ Voices on Place, Landscape & the Natural World (2021) and Bog People: A Working-Class Anthology of Folk Horror (2025). Natasha has written extensively on nature and socio-economics, and frequently discusses how authentic rural working class writing is represented, for several publications and programmes including BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, The Guardian, The Bookseller, Book Brunch, The Big Issue and The Economist. Natasha is the Founder/Director of The Working Class Writers Festival and Common Ground Nature Prize for Working Class Writers.
