55  Wales – Richard Llewellyn – How Green was my Valley (Score8.3}

How is it that I have reached the age of 71 without coming across this book? I knew of the film, of course when I was young, but had no idea that it was taken from a book rather than from the imagination of a script writer as so many of today’s mediocre films are. And I have been a voracious reader from childhood, youth and adulthood!

But I am glad that I have never read it before since I have really enjoyed it now. It is the story of Huw Morgan from his childhood and youth in a remote village in the south of Wales, soon to be despoiled by the introduction of coal mining and slag heaps which cover the hills, and devour many of the houses.

This is also a powerful story of the subjugation of ordinary people by rich people to make the rich richer while keeping the financial benefit to the poor as low as they can get away with.

One of the first things which awakens you to the fact that these people are different is the Welsh turns of phrase which are clearly transcribed into English as, for example, “There is cold it is”. This is similar to Scottish and Irish Gaelic.

Huw grew up speaking Welsh (see page 16), but I for one didn’t realise until much later that all of the people in the story were, in fact, speaking Welsh and the story could just as well be considered as a translation.

The Great Depression seems to be encroaching, with ironworks closing and wages being cut in the pits.

Huw loved bread and dripping for breakfast and other meals. So did I, though it seems to have dropped out of sight now.

In Chapter 16 we come upon something we have come upon before in our literary travels – colonial masters disparaging the local language and forbidding it to be used in school on pain of punishment. This happened in Scotland and Ireland too, as well as in the USA and Canada. For all I know it may happen anywhere where a minority of the population speaks a different language or even dialect from the majority who control things.

There is a section in which the men of the village hunt down a man who raped and killed a child. He still had all the evidence of the murder on him so the minister (Evangelical) gave permission for the girl’s male family to take the culprit up the mountain and deal with him. Next morning there was a large area of burnt grass on the side of the mountain.

On page 214 there is a beautiful description of the wind in the trees and Huw’s love of his valley. There is a poetic beauty in this book with its descriptions of the valleys, the making of food, the singing of dozens, then hundreds, of people together.

On page 320 we have the sheer cruelty of what the teacher did to a little child using a wooden board round her neck battering on her shins and cutting them while she walked, with its message “I must not speak Welsh in school” in English. It cut me to the quick because I know that such things actually happened. The teacher thoroughly deserved the hammering which Huw gave him.

It also tells of how people lived in their houses with small gardens, and doors always open to neighbours. The downside of the communities was that if they chose not to go to the church services they were shunned and boycotted. If they got on a bit they were continually talked about as getting above themselves. If a girl married out of the village, especially into a family of shopkeepers, doctors, solicitors or such like they were talked about in both directions – she’s only a miner’s slut or, she’s getting above herself.

The new minister, very popular when he first came to lead the church, replacing a “hell and damnation” preacher, was eventually driven from the church by ill-minded people. He had had the temerity to visit a young woman and her child. The husband was in the army in South Africa, fighting in the colonial wars against the Boers. The wife was full of sorrow and the minister was full of compassion. His visits were inevitably in the evening after his work for the church and the other parishioners was done, but evil tongues started wagging and he was discharged from the church.

A number of the parishioners left and followed him when he set up an independent chapel.

A final good point was the text on page 424 “The wind was busy with his comb in the grass

This is one of the small number of books which I have scored at 10.0

54  Netherlands – Deborah Moggach – Tulip Fever (Score 6.4)

 Sophia opens the story. Her old husband, Cornelis, intends to have their portrait painted by a young artist, Jan van Loos. We learn that they own a number of paintings, including “Susannah and the Elders”. Herrengracht in Amsterdam is where they live in one of the narrow, but high, buildings which front one of the canals, lading straight to the water.

 Maria is their serving girl. On page 22 she goes to bed, leaving her shoes upside down (to keep away the witches). When I was still at school, about 50 years ago, I stayed with a German family on a school exchange. When they had boiled eggs for breakfast they always knocked their spoons through the bottom “so that the witches could not use them as boats”. For a joke I copied them. I still do it all these years later, without even thinking.

 Tulip-mania runs through the story, affecting the lives of several of the characters. The writing is beautiful and the stories fit together piece by piece, told in short interweaving sections for the lives of the different members of the cast, Sophia the wife, Cornelis the husband, Maria the maid, William the lover of Maria, and Jan van Loos, the portrait painter.

 I gave the book a score of eight from ten.