Paddy Crewe’s second novel is set in his native north-east England in the 1980s, a particularly grim period for the region when unemployment was high due to the closures of steel works and coal mines. It is a gear-change from his much-praised and expansive debut novel My Name is Yip (2022) which was set in the 1830s Georgia gold rush. Many of the scenes in True Love instead conjure up the kind of parochial English melancholy that the singer Morrissey specialises in. Its open-hearted title is also perhaps a clue to how earnest this novel is. The main characters are two young people: Keely and Finn, who don’t meet until the third and final section of the book. The first section of the novel, “Seacoaler”, delineates Keely’s childhood living in a caravan on a campsite with her father, a seacoaler — someone who makes their living by collecting and selling coal washed up on the beach. He becomes emotionally absent — and eventually, literally absent — after the death by drowning of Keely’s brother Welty.
