A sumptuous novel of complex themes, including the politics of the workplace, power, protest, the tricks played by the memory, family situations, and death.

Nofel swmpus sy'n ymdrin â nifer o themâu cymhleth. Yn eu mysg y mae sefyllfa'r gweithle, pwer a phrotest, triciau'r cof, sefyllfaoedd teuluol, a marwolaeth.

The prose of Dai Vaughan never fails to engage the reader, with his intelligent and perceptive dialogue, descriptions and remarkable content. In this, and in his previous work Totes Meer, his unique talent is evident.

In this book, he creates a main framework for his stories that takes us from the allotment of his ex-seafaring father to the environment of Greenham Common, where the narrator’s wife eventually resides. This structure makes you feel you are listening in to private conversations between people, which lead into larger observations on life. He creates a world which expands as you read. The narrator’s job as draughtsman in an office allows us a window onto one world – his conversations with fellow workmates are beautifully crafted and curious and he slips into a variety of subjects with ease: as he sits outside a café ‘meanwhile a dark, shaggy German Shepherd has veered in my direction and pauses before me, peering at my pastry and allowing its tail the suggestion of a wag. It occurs to me that the melancholy of dogs, their bitter, unquenchable melancholy, lies in their stopping just short of complexity.’

Later, his visits to the Urology ward in a hospital as a patient are particularly cleverly written, when he writes of his communication with the other patients – ‘we hold our gowns behind us with one hand for modesty, using the other to gesture with, in a curious parody of Roman senators – thus doubtless bestowing on our speech a gravity it has done nothing to earn.’ He then cleverly links the subsequent hypothermia that occurs during surgery to the experiences of his father trying to save his colleagues out in the North Atlantic Sea.

The whole structure of the novel is full of these diversions where we are taken by surprise, taken back to a subject we thought he had told us everything about. This is his prime skill as a prose writer. His unusual sense of humour is maintained throughout as an undercurrent and he has a way of making us look at seemingly mundane situations and reviewing them as unique – ‘you pass a woman in the street. You find her attractive? Your response has been orchestrated by a billion-dollar pharmaceutical corporation in collusion with a billion-dollar ad agency.’

A very interesting and captivating novel overall.

Clare Maynard

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgement 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 ganiatad Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.