What’s On in Falmouth

This, My Second Life by Patrick Charnley

After a near-death experience and life-changing injury, twenty-year-old Jago Trevarno goes to stay with his uncle on his small coastal farm a few miles from St Ives in Cornwall. Their existence is a simple one, their lives measured by the span of the days, the rhythms of the seasons and the animals they care for. But lurking in the shadows is local villain, Bill Sligo, who has designs on Jacob’s farm and in particular on a field near the cliffs housing a derelict mineshaft. 

Wanting to repay his uncle’s kindness, Jago determines to find out what Bill Sligo is up to. Jago is still vulnerable though, and in pursuing Sligo he delves into a murky world that he is ill-equipped to deal with. 

How far will Bill Sligo go to get what he wants? Jago doesn’t know it yet, but once again he is in grave danger. 

Beautifully written, spare and elegiac, filled with shafts of light and darkness as well as the beauty and harshness of the Cornish landscape, Jago’s journey is one of hope, renewal and resilience as he comes to terms with this, his second life.

Son of beloved novelist and poet Helen Dunmore, Patrick Charnley grew up in the English West Country where he fell in love with Cornwall, the setting for this novel. While convalescing from a cardiac arrest that very nearly ended his life and left him with a brain injury, he began to write. He now lives in north London with his wife and children.