A humorous novel telling the story of Sam Jones, a bilingual valleys' girl. With its comic darkness and its write-as-she-speaks style, this is a novel that will have you laughing and crying. Reprint; first published November 2007.

Nofel Saesneg gyntaf yr awdures ifanc Catrin Dafydd. Stori am Sam Jones, merch ddwyieithog o'r cymoedd. Ceir yma ddogn helaeth o hiwmor yng nghanol sefyllfaoedd digon tywyll a dyrys. Trydydd argraffiad; cyhoeddwyd gyntaf fis Tachwedd 2007, ail argraffwyd ym ym mis Tachwedd 2008.

Random Deaths and Custard is a lively and unsentimental story of a few event-filled weeks in the life of Sam Jones, who is 18 and lives with her mum and her nanna in a no-hope town in the south Wales valleys. The story is told by Sam herself, and Catrin Dafydd brilliantly evokes the style of a teenager whose culture is more or less an oral one (unless you count text messages and Heat magazine as a body of literature). You can hear Sam’s voice with its inventive turn of phrase. She pleases her audience and comforts herself with her deadpan yet comic recounting of painful, dramatic and sometimes bizarre events.

Catrin Dafydd is said to want to bridge the gap between the two main language cultures of Wales. This book could be said to be about that gap. Sam spoke Welsh at school but not any more. She is proud when she is asked to do some translating at the custard factory where she works, but her lack of literacy in Welsh shows her up. The intersection of language and class divisions is cleverly set out. And though the book contains snatches of dialogue in Welsh, there are enough clues that non-speakers will be able to work them out without too much difficulty (even if we do miss out on some of the jokes).

There are some wonderfully convincing episodes in this portrait of life in the valleys: a traditional family lunch of German hors d’oeuvres from Lidl, or an afternoon out at the shopping mall in Merthyr. ‘The Rhondda looked pretty tonight,’ Sam observes at one point, ‘’cos you couldn’t see it I s’pose.’ To outsiders, Sam’s life looks pretty grim. But the book is not depressing. Sam has spirit, integrity, and a stoical sense of perspective. As she reflects, the glow in the dark stars on her bedroom ceiling shine down, as if to say ‘Fuck it Sam, you’ll be alright.’

Maggie Robertson

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.

The Winner of the 2010 World Book Day Prize for an English book review

This is not that elusive phenomenon ‘the great Welsh novel’. Nor does it aspire to be. But it succeeds admirably in what it sets out to achieve: tell the story, or part of it, of the life of 18-year-old Sam from the Rhondda, her family and friends in her and their own words. Some of these words will not be to the taste of everyone. Obscenities abound; and the language is a composite of youth-speak and non-standard forms common across the United Kingdom, south-Walian English and occasional passages of (not always grammatical) Welsh.

Sam is the descendant of a long line of frank, naïve and engaging young fictional narrators for whom formal education was not a great success and of whom Huck Finn was perhaps the first. That she should be so appealing is one of the novel’s great strengths. She is sensitively individualised not just another stereotyped working-class teenage girl. Unlike some of her friends and former schoolmates, she is not a mother or pregnant. Nor does she ‘shag about’, as she puts it, or do drugs, although she does smoke and drink when out with friends in the evening, which is not often, and is not averse to having her ‘face snogged off’ by a boy she likes. Most unusually, although I may be doing her generation a disservice, she likes to relax to Classic FM without, however, running the risk of appearing a ‘posho’.

Equally free of caricature is the portrayal of Sam’s friends and the members of her family; all are also vividly individualised. Although her family seems to have enough problems to earn the label ‘dysfunctional’, the way the author portrays its different characters and relationships discourages the reader from applying it. The intermittent surface discord is contradicted by the strength of the emotional ties underneath. Perhaps the author’s greatest achievement, however, is the skill with which she walks the high wire between tragedy and comedy. The litany of calamities that strike the characters resembles the plot of a soap opera like Pobol y Cwm, of which Sam’s Nanna is such a fan, but they are constantly undercut by moments of farce which made me laugh out loud – particularly in the two funerals, Nanna’s and Tellin’s.

Less successful, to me at least, was the Welsh language sub-plot. Although the author is effectively satirical at the expense of what Sam calls ‘the Welshy stuff’ and ‘Welshy-Welshy twats’ (and indeed at the expense of other targets, the media for example), I never felt that the important issues of bilingual policies and the use of Welsh were fully integrated. This is a minor weakness, however, in an enjoyable, funny and touching novel.

Rob Jeffcoate
(Bodfari Book Club)

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.