Editorial Director Harriet Poland has bought UK and British Commonwealth Rights after a multi-publisher auction, from Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedmann Literary Agency. The book will be published in Summer 2023.
UNDERCURRENT is a memoir of rural poverty and escape that blends nature-writing with personal testimony and investigation. Cornwall has long been the heartland of the second home, a county of staggering beauty and striking inequality, where working-class families are pushed out of the villages of their childhood and ignored by a political system not built to protect them. Natasha Carthew grew up in a Cornish village that felt a world away from the Rick Stein seafronts, experiencing a childhood of perilous instability and limited opportunity while drinking in the beauty of the world around her. She found solace in the local mobile library, and freedom in the written word. In UNDERCURRENT she comes full circle, returning to the place of her birth to make sense of her journey away from it.
This memoir will explore the complex ecosystem of rural poverty, including precarious employment opportunities, limited education and healthcare resources, and the ravages poverty plays upon the human mind and body. It is also a love letter to a landscape that is among the most beautiful in the world, an Eden of natural magnificence and a refuge for the spirit. Natasha’s writing has always connected the beauty of the world with its harshest lessons, and in her first non-fiction book she reveals a powerful truth about society.
Natasha Carthew is the author of three YA novels (Bloomsbury), an adult novel, ALL RIVERS RUN FREE (Riverrun), several books of poetry, and a contributor to HAG: FORGOTTEN FOLKTALES RETOLD (Virago), and to WOMEN ON NATURE (Unbound). She is a regular public voice on working class stories, has written for several national newspapers and recorded essays for BBC Radio broadcast. She is also the Founder and Artistic Director of The Working Class Writers’ Festival.
Natasha Carthew says: ‘It was incredibly important to me that UNDERCURRENT my love letter to Cornwall, was placed into the hands of a creative, compassionate editor, an editor who, whilst treating my memoir with care and consideration, would not be afraid to challenge the picture-postcard image of a County that in truth is ravaged by severe poverty; I’m delighted to say that Harriet Poland is without doubt that editor. With Hodder Studio I know that I have found my true literary home, a publisher of innovation and verve, I can think of no better place to publish this, my heartland story.’
Harriet Poland comments: ‘Of many society-shifting events of the two years, the great migration to ‘the country’ is perhaps the one that will leave the longest mark. What is a privilege to some is the slow destruction of a way of life to others, and this book is a testament to the impact of rural inequality. Natasha, as ever, balances beauty, intimacy and truth in her writing, and this memoir is a vitally important and moving record of lives beyond the M25.’
You can pre-order the book at Waterstones here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/undercurrent/natasha-carthew/9781399706476