Category: books
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‘Like an inedible chocolate’: a defence of slugs
It was in London that I saw the book, quite by chance. The picture on its cover, ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’, by Ceri Richards, was instantly familiar. The title, The script of the stones: a short walk at the end of the world intrigued me (as does any book…
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Cylchu Cymru
Nôl ym mis Gorffennaf, yn Gŵyl Arall yng Nghaernarfon, digwyddodd imi alw heibio i sesiwn yng ngardd gefn Palas Print lle’r oedd Gruffudd ab Owain yn trafod ei lyfr newydd Yn ei dro: Cymru’r ddwy olwyn. Sgwrs ddifyr oedd hi, ac o’r diwedd dwi wedi cael amser i ddarllen y llyfr yn drylwyr. (Rhaid bod…
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Esther a’r llyffant
Ar ôl hala tipyn o amser yn ddiweddar yn Llanybydder, tynnais i fy nghopi o Y llyffant o’r silff. Nofel hunangofiannol yw hon, sy’n adlewyrchu profiad yr awdur, Ray Evans, o dyfu lan yn ferch fach yn y pentref rhwng y ddau ryfel byd. Ac ar ôl ei hailddarllen, allwn i ddim peidio â dod…
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Geoff Dyer grows up
Geoff Dyer is one of those authors who never writes the same book twice. He’s produced around twenty of them so far, on a kaleidoscopic range of subjects, including the history of photography, India, Soviet film, the First World War, jazz heroes, Roger Federer and war movies. My favourite is Out of sheer rage: wrestling…
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Imaging Fanny Price
Mansfield Park isn’t, I suspect, the favourite novel of Jane Austen of those who value her for her cutting wit and comforting social outlook. Because, though not without its share of humour, it’s a far from comforting work. It asks questions about how people of strong convictions but introverted character and uncertain social status can…
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Peter Finch: Wales’s Mr Poetry
In front of me is a 24-page pamphlet published by ‘second aeon publications’ in 1971. It’s held together with a couple of rusting staples and contains seventeen short poems, typewritten and photocopied. Back then, that’s how you produced a skinny book of poems: gritty, home-made, no upper-case. But this one, John Tripp’s bute park and…
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Dust and roses: Philip Pullman’s vision
The rose field, published in October, completes Philip Pullman’s massive ‘Book of dust’ trilogy. More than that, it completes the whole cycle of ‘Lyra’ novels that Pullman began thirty years ago with Northern lights. It seems to me that it’s one of the greatest achievements in children’s literature in our time. Though ‘children’s literature’ is…
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Aber, prifddinas llên
Ar 31 Hydref cyhoeddodd UNESCO fod Aberystwyth/Ceredigion wedi ennill statws ‘dinas llenyddiaeth’, gan ymuno â rhai cannoedd o leoliadau eraill ledled y byd a gydnabyddir am eu ‘ymrwymiad i ddiwydiannau creadigol a bywyd diwylliannol’. (Does dim ‘dinas’ gonfensiynol yn yr ardal, wrth gwrs, ond mae’n bosib dadlau bod Aberystwyth yn rhyw fath o ‘ddinas-wladwriaeth’, fel…
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George Bowring: murdered by Welsh magic
The Victorian writer R.D. Blackmore, if he’s remembered at all today, is known for his three-volume novel Lorna Doone. It’s an adventure story, set on Exmoor in the seventeenth century, about the feuding and violent Doone clan and the love between the narrator, John Ridd, and the eponymous Lorna. The book sold badly on its…
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Goodbye, Paul Durcan
When the news came recently that Paul Durcan had died, I pulled from the shelf my copy of his sequence of poems, Crazy about women, published by the National Gallery of Ireland in 1991. They’re all inspired by paintings in the Gallery’s collection. Some of the poems are long, some short; some playful, others penetrating…