Saltburn

<p><em>May the residents of the real Saltburn-by-the-Sea and neighbouring towns forgive my mermaids, my nuclear power stations, my foetus museums and so on and so on. They were written with love.</em></p><p><br></p><p>Welcome to <em>Saltburn</em>, an extraordinary town on the English coast with sweeping poverty and nuclear fallout, where young lovers, radioactive and lusty, fall in love, and sea creatures work at the local penny arcade. </p><p><br></p><p>In a series of interconnected short stories a young orphan is taken in by an alchemist, and falls in love with a mermaid. The son of a glove manufacturer is sent to Paris on business, where he falls for a deep-sea diver. One schoolboy bites another, gains psychic abilities and realises they will one day be in love. A rock salesman exposes a cover-up by big business and frees kidnapped women.</p><p><br></p><p>In startling prose that could have been concocted by a hallucinating Raymond Carver and Charles Bukowski, <em>Saltburn </em>is a town – and a book – like no other.</p>