Sharon Gosling on new book The House Beneath The Cliffs

Sharon Gosling’s first “grown-up” fiction – set in a tiny Scottish village that clings to a ledge just feet from the sea – had been in her head for nearly 11 years before she decided to put pen to paper.

Her debut was inspired by the communities of Gamrie and Crovie in Aberdeenshire and a tiny cottage, whose location she is keeping a secret, that gave birth to the story’s fictitious dwelling Fishergirl’s Luck. She and her now-husband stumbled on the cottage – little more than a shed – during a holiday in the region.

She tells P.S: “Settings are always really important for me. I tend to collect them in my head. We had this holiday and it was the first time we had been to that part of the Scottish coast. Fishergirl’s Luck is a real house in another very small village on that coast.

“I have always been drawn to living in very small places. We have a tiny cottage where we are in Cumbria and seeing that little place completely captured my imagination. What would make someone want to live there like that?

“And the landscape all along that coast is just beautiful. That also informed the story.”

A novel idea

Gosling, a former magazine writer and author of children’s and young adult books as well as non-fiction movie tie-ins for Titan (Wonder Woman, Tomb Raider – both The Art of Making of the Film 2017 – and The Art and Making of Penny Dreadful 2015), admits she didn’t think she had it in her to come up with a fiction for grown-ups.

At the home she shares with her husband, an antiquarian bookshop owner and freelance book editor, she says: “I wasn’t sure I had the emotional maturity to do it. I had the idea for the novel about 11 years ago when I was on holiday with my husband, who was then my boyfriend. That’s when I saw the cottage that was the inspiration for Fishergirl’s Luck. So it had been in my head for a long time. Sometimes it just takes the right spark to get you to something.”

That spark was her agent, who encouraged her to put her uncertainty aside. Once she had decided, there was no turning back. She explains: “When I did decide to write the book I knew I had to go and stay on the Aberdeenshire coast again, and that’s when I came across Crovie. It was perfect.

“I did struggle over whether I should use its real name in the book and in the end I did, but with the explanation that this was a fictionalised version of the village. We have been three or four times now. I would live there if I could.”

The House Beneath The Cliffs

The House Beneath The Cliffs hits bookshops on August 19. In it, we meet chef Anna, who moves from London to Crovie (pronounced Crivie) on the Moray Firth for a fresh start. But her new home, Fishergirl’s Luck – bought unseen – is little more than a shed. What’s worse is it is smack bang beneath cliffs and just feet from the roaring tide.

Making the best of a bad job, she sets about cleaning and making it her own. And the weeks pass, and she begins to settle into its gentle way of life.

Her passion for cooking reignites, sparking a successful pop-up lunch club, much to the disappointment of someone who is keen to see her fail. Can she put down roots in this village? Or will she flee when life, and love, become too challenging?”

Buoyed by her adult novel debut, she is now in the thick of her second. She smiles: “The new book is a standalone and it’s another saga, this time about a community trying to save a bookshop.”

Sharon Gosling – The House Beneath The Cliffs, Simon & Schuster, £8.99