Cove

A raw, mesmerising, narrative poem, albeit disguised as prose.

A-lone, in a kayak, to scatter his father’s ashes.
A communion - with memories, with the elements.
Lightning!
A transformation in an instant - disconnected from everything, from himself.
A battle to survive - to get to safety, to return to “her” and their unborn child...

"If you disappear you will grow into a myth for them.
You will exist only as absence.
If you get back, you will exist as a legend."

Image: Calm before the storm. “Catch the Breeze” (west coast of Ireland) by Stephen McGuinness. (Source)

Injured and adrift without a paddle.
He swishes back and forth:
between life and death,
between tenses,
between “I” and “you”.

I too was at sea,
with little sense of show more time or distance,
his or mine.

Rippled memories recall my father’s ashes
as they caught the light,
like the stardust we’re made of.
Sparkling a startling final farewell,
as they fanned across the surface,
sinking slowly on their final journey.
Ashes to water.
And a stream of silent tears.
Salt water into fresh.
Communion and coalescence.
Distillation and transfiguration.
The circle of life.

Image: Alone in a boat, under threatening skies. “Mercy Seat”, by Stephen McGuinness. (Source)

Quotes

The book is written in short paragraphs, with extra space between each one. I’ve added line breaks to emphasise the poetry of it, but not changed any words.

“He swings the fish from the water…
It gasps, thrashes, drums.
Something rapid and primal,
ceremonial,
in the shallow of the open boat.”

“He’d had to go through so many possessions,
things that exploded with memories…
but it was the opposite with the ashes.
He was trying to hold away the fact that they knew nothing of what they were.”

“The water beneath him, suddenly aglut.
Sentinel somehow, with jellyfish.”

“His consciousness a snapped cord
his mind was trying to pull back together.”

“A sense of himself,
a fly trapped the wrong side of glass.”

“It is a spell.
They are a quick shape,
a liquid in their own right
through the black water,
bright spirits under him.” [dolphins]

“The sand is wet, intimate.”

“The smell of the jumper triggers something,
but it is like a piano key hitting strings that are gone.”

“A flock of jellyfish, like negligées.”

“A metallic sheen comes to the water, like cutlery.
Like metal much touched.
The white clouds glow, a sort of leaden at the edge.”

Image: A cove, a safe haven. “Inishowen, Donegal” by Stephen McGuinness. (Source)

Elephant in the boat?

It’s impossible to read this and not think of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (see my review HERE). But it’s unfair to both. Yes, this is also a poetic, multi-sensory, almost liturgical story about surviving alone at sea, while remembering loved ones back on land, but it is very much its own story, told in its own way. Also, Hemingway was adamant that "There isn't any symbolism” in his tale, whereas Jones explicitly mentions auguries, signs, and echoes, and the many likely candidates include a dolphin, doll, butterfly, wren, banner, and sunfish, as well as sunken towns and u-boats.

It may also be similar to the 2014 Robert Redford film, All Is Lost, but I’ve not watched it.

Celtic waters

Stephen McGuinness’ pictures echo my journey through Cynan Jones’ story. But McGuinness is Irish whereas Jones is Welsh. I hope they don’t mind: they’re both Celts, from lands where the sun sets over the sea, to the west. show less

I can not forget this read. I refer to it in my head, I think about its stark, vividly limned images. I am so deeply glad Author Cynan wrote it. This is my 2021 Six-Stars-of-Five read.

Rating: 5* 6 stars of five

Don't ever, ever think you're in a dark place again, is the primary message of this novella-cum-prose poem.

He is holding his hands in the water, rubbing the blood from them, when the hairs on his arms stand up. The sway briefly, like seaweed in the current. Then lie down again.

He looks up. A strange ruffle come across the surface.

The birds had lifted suddenly & gone away. As if there were some signal. They are flecks now, a hiatus disappearing against the light off the sea.

He is far enough out for the land to have paled in show more view.

Our nameless point-of-view man is busy preparing to take his kayak out of the cove near his home. With his experienced preparations, catching a fish for his supper and with the material goods he needs to make the short trip comfortable, there is a heaviness. The foreboding the above passage evokes in me is matched by the fact that he's there to scatter his father's ashes. But the world doesn't have time to mourn:

There was a piping of oystercatchers, a clap of water as a fish jumped. He saw it for a moment, a silver nail. A thing deliberately, for a brief astounding moment, broken from its element.

These passages make me think I live in Author Cynan's head. I see and hear them in realtime. I am deeply unsettled...what is coming must be difficult because these quotidian sensations are so powerful. The ashes, the small moments of daily reality going on despite the huge gaping hole of his father's death...going out of the shelter of this homely cove, noticing its real-world comforts...
...
...
...I've read your books before, Author Cynan, something terrible this way comes.

A moment truly as before-and-after as it is portrayed to be: A lightning strike.

While alone at sea. In a kayak. With a few hours' trip supplies.

Waking up alive, though after how long he doesn't know and with the arm that conducted the current dead (the fern-like pattern of Lichtenberg figures disfiguring his now-useless hand and arm), he inventories his few supplies and begins preparations to survive. It is grueling to read and almost reeks of experience, which I hope is second-hand:

He takes off the buoyancy aid & pulls on the thick sweater, useless arm first. The smell of the sweater triggers something, but it is like a piano key hitting strings that are gone.

That image is both terrifying to me, and gorgeous to read. What a superbly wrought way to describe the sensation of losing a piece of yourself, your experience. Where one expects resonant musical pleasure, there is the presence of silence and not just the absence of sound.

There is a miserable fight, with the good luck of an itchy sunfish rubbing against his kayak and beneficently steering it towards land; there is a moment of aesthetic joy as night luminescent seas trace the presence of his hand; there is so much work and so much pain:

If you disappear you will grow into a myth for them. You will exist only as an absence. If you get back, you will exist as a legend.

That's effective self-talk for a man who's been through some huge change. "They" are the woman pregnant with his child, and the unborn person itself. For, as the sea's many thefts (water, skin) bite ever deeper, he needs this goal to focus on, and needs also his dead father's ghost in his own head reminding him how to do this, how to survive.

An image of fatherhood that I am so unspeakably glad to see in fiction, littered as it is with cheating lying beating abusing men.

The ordeal continues. The night and the day and then there is land...land within sight...with lights...and he MacGyvers up a sail to speed his bonny boat...
...
...into a squall.

All of his life he's had a recurring dream: the car leaves the road. It is never the impact that terrifies him, wakes him. His fear comes the moment he feels the car go.

His life does not pass before his eyes. There is even a point he feels calm. But then he sees the faces of the people he loves. He sees their faces as they see him go.

Here is a man driven to Be There, never to leave, always support and defend, finally driven to his uttermost extreme in search of survival.

And that is where we end.

I close my remarks by noting that this is the book I wish The Old Man and the Sea had been, but was not. show less

Offshore in a kayak, taking his father’s ashes to their hidden cove, the man is caught by a storm. Lightning strikes. He awakens in the water, attached to the kayak by a leg strap. Dead fish and ash cover the surface all around him. Arms stretched out to the sky. Memory only as functional as his body.

Jones tells the story of this novella in a stripped down rhythmic fashion, akin to prose poetry. Short paragraphs, short sentences, lots of white space, dropped subjective pronouns, the prose as choppy and insistent as the water holding him up.

The man at first can do nothing for himself. Nor does he know who he is or where he belongs. His body and mind begin to return by pieces. He understands there is a her, and she is pregnant, and he show more must try to survive for them.

In this story man does not live for himself but for those he loves. They hold him up. The movement of the water nudging the kayak is her stomach with their baby kicking. They stick to him more surely than the characteristics of his own individuality. His father’s ashes literally on his skin where the water has not washed them away, as the lightning swept his own name from him.

A second storm pushes the kayak toward cliffs. Towards being smashed against them. He thinks he must leave the boat and trust in the flotation jacket to help him survive. He must get wholly into the water.

His life does not pass before his eyes. There is even a point he feels calm. But then he sees the faces of the people he loves. He sees their faces as they see him go.

A fast read, the prose poetry adds up to a memorable encounter, though it could be more powerful as a novel if it had a greater canvas. 3.5 for me. show less

Epic. This is the perfect short novel. Disorienting and alive and vibrating with energy and also cinematic and heartfelt. It fully inhabits the main characters confusion and pain while struggling to survive in the aftermath of being hit by lightning on his boat. Also it is just beautifully written. You will be turning back and forth in this one to reread passages because they are so dang good and you will turn back and forth throughout to figure out whats going on. As the story goes on things clear up but its so good that I got impatient and went back and reread portions to try and figure it out ahead of the pages to come. Its beautiful and raw and everything a modern survival story should be.

When you finish a book, close it slowly and sit with it while you re-think the ending, you know you've just read something special. I've never read a book like this, not only is it a very short novel but the text has been pared down to the bare bone basics. No overblown, lengthy descriptions, no huge family tree of characters to get my head around - we don't even get to know the names of the characters. I nearly called them 'The Cast' because this has the feel of one of those prize winning Short Films. Once I got used to the abbreviated writing style I loved it! Mind you, in the hands of a less skilled author it may not have been as powerful. I've seen in other reviews, words like - hypnotic, brilliant, unflinching and I totally agree show more with them all. Trying to think of something I could add myself, I'd have to say - Cove has been one of those rare books that I’ve thankfully stumbled across which is truely beyond compare. show less

Cove is the hauntingly beautiful story of a man who travels out to sea in a kayak to scatter the ashes of his father. A lightning storm approaches and the kayaker is struck by lightning. Suddenly, he wakes up with the realization that he lost his memory, he is partially paralyzed and in unknown waters.

The readers are granted an intimate glimpse inside the mind of the unnamed protagonist, his battle of survival and clash with the power of nature. The writing in this story is phenomenal, poetic and entrancing. Filled with symbolism and purpose, this lyrical novella will not easily be forgotten.

Thanks so much to Catapult Books for providing me with a copy of Cove.

A man fishing at sea is struck by lightening. A woman standing on shore sees a floating doll.

The blurb said this book was about a man's survival at sea. It is that, but not in a realistic way. It was short, hallucinatory, and often confusing. There was nothing direct, straight-forward, or easily understandable about it. After I finished it, I went back and skimmed it through again, and I began to see connections, and understand it more, and I liked it much more than on first reading. (It's very short, not even a novel).

In a lot of ways, this reminded me of William Golding's Pincher Martin, but it is much shorter.

3 1/2 stars