Tom Sykes and Louis Netter, Coast of Teeth

Tom Sykes and Louis Netter, Coast of Teeth: Travels to English Seaside Towns in an Age of Anxiety (Oxford: Signal Books, 2023), 146pp (ISBN 9781838463076; 9781910461662)

Review 

This is a unique book, somewhere between a travelogue of forgotten English backwaters, a satirical sketch-book about a society in crisis, and a rigorous psycho-geographical account of an underprivileged landscape. It is, therefore, hard to categorise, but all the better for that.

The words are by Tom Sykes and the illustrations by Louis Netter, but there’s far more to its structure than that. The two undertook a series of journeys round English seaside towns, but the written text indicates that it was very much a joint enterprise: affably ill-at-ease, hiding the notebook and the sketchpad, the two are rather like Mass-Observers from the 1930s, running the same risks of being lynched by the folk whose lives they annotate. There is a verbal coherence to the written text: ironic, allusive, at times downright hilarious. And the visual style of the drawings is coherent too: in the style of George Grosz or Otto Dix, they mix the everyday with the grotesque. Will Self is quite wrong to say “they have the Donald McGill vibe”: they are not remotely populist in their manner. What is interesting is the relationship between image and word. It is not purely illustrative. The images don’t flesh out the words. Rather, the images are in apposition to the words: an analogous world that stands beside them.

The geographical spread is extensive: Torquay in the west, Bournemouth in the south, Whitby in the north. As might be expected, the most detailed material is of the area the pair know best, Portsmouth and its environs. If I have any criticism of the work, it is that this part is much more detailed (and more angry) than the rest. The rage of the Portsmouth and Hayling sections comes from familiarity and a sense of waste, and so it slightly overdetermines and unbalances the texture of the whole. But it’s not really a drawback. 

Overall...

What holds the book together marvellously, though, is a rigorous sense of the reasons for economic and cultural decline. It is at the geographical boundaries that the fault-lines in a society are most in evidence, and this is richly demonstrated here, with a wonderful eye for detail. The awful food! The clothes! The decay! But Coast of Teeth takes the utmost care not to condescend to the denizens of the coastal wastelands they describe. Rather, they rail at the circumstances which have cut whole areas and whole populations adrift.

This is a very radical book, but it is never propagandist or dull. It made me laugh aloud several times: the plight of the observers is very well drawn. It left me wanting more: more piers, more takeaways, more grubby stopovers.  Here’s to the next volume!

More from the authors

Sue Harper is Emeritus Professor of Film History at the University of Portsmouth and an accomplished writer of fiction. Her new book, Blood and Coal, will be published by IMDmedia in 2024. Her short stories can be seen on her website (www.sueharper.co.uk) and on her YouTube channel, sueharpershortstories.

Dr Tom Sykes is Associate Professor in Creative Writing and Global Journalism at the University of Portsmouth. A theorist and practitioner of journalism and non-fiction, he has published numerous academic works, and is a regular contributor to Private Eye, New Statesman, The Scotsman, and other media outlets.

Dr Louis Netter is Senior Lecturer in the School of Art, Design and Performance at the University of Portsmouth. His artwork (primarily etching, reportage drawing, and illustration) is collected in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, and US universities.