Does it put you off when you see a sticker on a book cover proclaiming it has won a literary prize? I’m guessing it doesn’t for most people or the publishers wouldn’t do it, though my book group always groans when we see the Booker Prize Winner sticker, even if we end up loving the book.

However The Mermaid of Black Conch, which won the more accessible Costa Book of the Year 2020, is now out in paperback, and is well worth a dip into.

A fisherman called David waits for a catch off the island of Black Conch in the caribbean. Instead of the expected red snapper, he is surprised by a mermaid, red skinned with black hair hanging with anemones and conch shells. They seem to have an instant connection and they meet at sea many times until by mistake she follows a different boat.  The mermaid is captured by American tourists who treat her like an animal and plan to exploit her.

David rescues her and slowly gains her trust as she metamorphoses back into the woman she once was before she was cursed. But she is spotted by one of her captors and curses don’t disappear…

I love books like this which make you wonder – how did the author think of that? From the title I expected a timeframe at least a couple of centuries back like the legends that inspired the story, but instead it is set in 1970’s, just close enough to be in living memory for many readers but far enough away to have perspective.

The same originality is shown in the way the tale is told three ways – by the narrator, in excerpts from David’s diary, and from the poetic inner voice of the mermaid herself which is beautifully written and gives a way into an otherwise difficult to reach character with little language.

The painful, difficult transformation back into a two legged woman is also brilliantly captured, as is the complicated relationship between the island’s past and future, encapsulated by relationship between Aycayia, the descendant of Victorian Anglican clergy and owner of most of the land, and Life, the poor local boy she has known from childhood who is the father of her child.

It’s a bittersweet story, but imaginatively told, and well worth spending time with over a cup of coffee.

The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey ISBN 978-1-529-11549-9 £8.99