Viva Brighton Issue #64 June 2018

LOCAL LITERATURE
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BOOK REVIEW:
THE BRIGHTON MERMAID BY DOROTHY KOOMSON
This is the time of year when
we start to think about summer
holidays and what books
to pack for the beach. They’ve
become something of a genre
in themselves, beach reads.
They have to be page turners:
light enough in terms of style
to pick up and put down while
we sip our cocktails at the bar;
dark enough in terms of subject
matter to contrast with
the Club Tropicana lifestyle
of sun, sea, and sangria.
The Brighton Mermaid is an
early contender for the kind
of summer novel I mean. The
fact that it starts on a beach
– our very own pebbly strand – puts it in beach
read territory as surely as if it had chucked a towel
on the sun lounger. But is this a novel to go in the
luggage or one to leave at the airport bookstand?
The story starts in 1993 when two teenage friends,
Nell and Jude, find a body washed up on the shore.
Like them, she’s a young black woman, not much
older than they are, a charm bracelet and a tattoo
of a mermaid with the words ‘I am Brighton’ inked
on her arm the only clues to her identity. Shortly
after the girls find the body, Jude disappears.
When the police draw a blank, Nell takes on
the search for The Brighton Mermaid’s identity
and hopes her investigation will also lead to her
missing friend.
This quest will take decades, and she will experience
police brutality, a dodgy cop trying to fit her
father up for the murder, her sister Macy’s OCD
(triggered by the traumas that
ensue) and a world which
gradually reveals itself to be
a much darker place than the
one she thought it was. Those
who are close to her are not
what they seem, and everyone
is keeping secrets, secrets
that will prove dangerous to
Nell, and in the end threaten
her life.
One of the pleasures of the
novel was seeing familiar
local landmarks leap out of
the book’s pages. Whether it
was streets I know well, such
as George Street in Hove,
pubs like The Cricketers, or
features such as the Peace Statue, I was both in a
place that was very recognisable, and a place transformed
by the dark imaginings of (local resident)
Dorothy Koomson.
Koomson was Richard and Judied for her third
novel, My Best Friend’s Girl, which was chosen as
one of the Summer Reads of 2006. Twelve years
later The Brighton Mermaid, with its short chapters,
multiple narrators, timeframes that switch backwards
and forwards from 1993 to the present, and
a few places in between, has all of the classic elements
of the big beach novel. It adds extras depths
to the whodunnit in terms of characterisation and
emotional impact, and races to a conclusion that
had me turning the pages as if they were on fire.
Pack it with your sun cream and dream darkly of
home. John O’Donoghue
Century, £12.99
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