A collection of four long stories exploring various facets of the complex nature of love and the quest for fulfilling relationships among family members, their lovers and acquaintances, by one of Wales's most prolific writers.

Casgliad o bedair stori hir yn archwilio amryfal agweddau ar natur gymhleth cariad a'r ymchwil am berthynas foddhaol ymhlith aelodau o'r teulu, cariadon a chydnabod, gan un o brif lenorion Cymru.

This volume of four short stories, which explore the nature of personal relationships and political affiliations on a canvas that covers nonconformist Welsh-speaking north Wales and socialist south Wales, as well as parts of rural Italy, may well prove to be familiar territory to those acquainted with Emyr Humphreys’s genius.

Each story in turn considers the nature of human relationships. Lady Ramrod dislikes dogs but, after having had several difficult relationships with men, may well settle down with a dog in her arms. The women are almost without exception far stronger than the male characters. Gwion, in the story that gives the volume its title, spends time and effort serving others, and when the opportunity to serve fails to present itself ‘felt the strength ebb away from his legs’ but was ‘determined to get away and start again’.

Menna is an elderly lady from a north-Walian, Welsh-speaking background who married a rugby-playing socialist from south Wales. This story explores the relationship between generations by taking three members of a family - husband, wife and mother-in-law - on holiday to Italy in a car. It is also concerned with what it means to be Welsh at the end of the twentieth century and with the ever changing, ever constant, importance of ensuring continuity in the next generation.

This theme is taken further in ‘Penrhyn-hen’ when Sioned Anwyl takes her idealistic partner Bryn Williams home to the family farm. There her sister lives, tending to Richie, an invalid, guarding Sioned’s inheritance, cultural and financial, and nurturing a dark secret. Whatever atrocity happened to Sioned in Penrhyn-hen, and whatever ideals Bryn might have had, it is he who returns to his balanced world in an English secondary school and she who walks ‘to the old house without looking back’.

This volume displays the subtlety and refinement expected of an accomplished and daring author such as Emyr Humphreys. The stories are episodic in nature, the narrative whittled down to the bare minimum; he allows as little as possible of the plot to slip through his fingers at any time, often culminating in an almost anticlimactic fashion that relies heavily on an intelligent readership. This is yet another volume of prose of the highest quality to be added to the shelf bearing Emyr Humphreys’s name.

R. Arwel Jones

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.