'A
page-turning, punk-rocking new novel of Cornwall'. Sometime at the beginning of
the twenty-first century, Charlie Curnow lives on the notorious Trelawny Estate
on the outskirts of Camborne in Cornwall, at the arse-end of Britain.
Far
from being 'Inspirational Cornwall' or the 'Delectable Duchy', the Estate is rife
with crime, squalor and Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. Heroin and Crack dealers,
and tackers smoking cannabis, mingle with psychotic ex-cons and the unemployed.
Predictably, the Police stay away, and bus drivers refuse to enter. It
is where Social Services dump their rubbish, and where tourists don't go.
In
contemporary Cornwall, it's hard to find a proper job, let alone buy a house.
Across from the Estate is the once heavily mined, Great Tin Lode - a world heritage
site - where the stacks of hundreds of engine houses pay homage to an industrial
and prosperous past.
Now, it is where Trelawny's youth go to drink, have
sex and shoot-up. Yet, Charlie Curnow has ambitions of his own. Music is his escape
from the Estate's madness, but when he suggests forming a rock band, that's when
all hell really breaks loose.
In his new novel, Alan M Kent offers an utterly
irreverent and wildly improper story of Cornwall. Written in broad dialect, it
bubbles with salty satire, but it is also genuinely touching and very truthful
indeed.
