The seaside gothic by its own admission is contradictory, existing in duality: Schrödinger’s genre. It is both and neither a classification, and so anything defined as seaside gothic literature is simultaneously included in other groupings elsewhere. The pieces I have collected for this quarter exist in two worlds, exploring the liminality of the seaside.
Fiction: Alex Garland, The Beach
Perhaps better known for its film adaptation, Alex Garland’s novel is a surreal dive into seaside tourism through a pseudo-utopian escape. Dark in nature despite the brightness of the sun, Garland deconstructs secret tourism in a book perhaps best read comfortably at home instead of at a far-off beachside resort.
Poetry: Robert Graves, The Beach
A short two-stanza poem, ‘The Beach’ by Robert Graves is to-the-point yet holds so much in so few words. It considers both tourism and trade, visitors and those who live by the sea, enjoyment and horror, life and death, and is of the water as much as it is of the land. It is a masterpiece of brevity.
Nonfiction: Natasha Carthew, Undercurrent
A personal exploration of the class divide on the Cornish coast, Natasha Carthew’s memoir sees her returning to the shoreline where she grew up, now unable to afford to live in her own home town. Considerate and measured, yet simmering and emotional, Carthew dives into duality with her fists forward.
Television: Boardwalk Empire
Perhaps more known for dramatising mobsters and bootleggers, Boardwalk Empire is a seashore-set sprawling crime drama with the edge of the land and the start of the sea at its heart. The titular boardwalk is its central point, with the narrative spreading inland from it but always connected to it.
Issue 7
COASTAL BLUR
Seb Reilly is an award-winning published writer, fiction author, poet, and occasional musician. He is Editor of Seaside Gothic. From 2015–2020 he was Editor-in-Chief of Thanet Writers and in 2021 he was named Kent Columnist of the Year for his column in The Isle of Thanet News.