THE SHORE by Sara Taylor

A young girl buys chicken necks to use as crab bait and returns to her dilapidated home and abusive father to try to scrape together enough food for dinner. From there, the vibrant and often bloody world of The Shore only gets bigger, following several characters across centuries in interconnected short stories that serve as chapters. The stories range from the 1800s to the distant future, from ordinary to downright bizarre. Yet life in the Shore remains oddly the same even through this vast scope — people are born, they die, they struggle to scrape by, they harbor dark secrets, they commit atrocities and heartbreaking acts of love, all on this seemingly eternal cluster of islands.

At times the sheer amount of disturbing images can be exhausting to read through. Although there is beauty in the Shore, with its lush vegetation and wild ponies, Taylor paints it mostly as a grim and even gruesome place, describing in detail the particular smell of the factories where chickens are slaughtered, the way it feels to stab someone or be held down to an open flame, and, eventually, the particular ways a widespread disease disfigures its victims in the future. It seems the worst of humanity inhabits the Shore; the supporting cast is full of abusive husbands and fathers, rapists, drug dealers, murderers. The main characters can be equally appalling, yet their stories are undeniably compelling. Once you’re immersed in this gritty world, it’s hard to put the book down.

Sara Taylor writes beautifully, immersing the reader fully in the lives of these characters. The stories are woven together subtly — a dead relative mentioned briefly may star in their own chapter later, a passing reference may turn out to be a major plot point — which, for me, made this book a fun puzzle to read. Naturally, some of the chapters are weaker than others and don’t seem to fit into the larger story, but once you get to the final chapter, it becomes clear how everything led to that point. And it is satisfying to get there — although the journey isn’t bad, either.