An edition of a classic post-industrial novel, published with a new afterword by Richard Poole. The novel charts the lives of four closely bound characters, against the background of a declining steelworks. Originally published in 1988.

Argraffiad gydag epilog newydd gan Richard Poole o glasur o nofel ôl-ddiwydiannol i oedolion yn dilyn bywydau pedwar cymeriad yn erbyn cefndir o ddirywiad y diwydiant dur. Cyhoeddwyd yn wreiddiol ym 1988.

Additional review follows

‘This is a compelling first novel . . . The prose is spare and poetic, at once plain and rich, musical in its rhythms of speech and clear descriptions,’ was how the New York Times described Christopher Meredith’s Shifts when it was first published in 1988. Theirs was a sentiment universal held, and a year later the novel won the Welsh Arts Council Fiction Award. Now, almost twenty years after its first publication, Seren has reissued the novel under their Classic imprint with a newly written afterword by Richard Poole.

Shifts charts the decline of a south Wales industrial town in the late 1970s. Pre-Thatcherism, it is nonetheless prophetic in its social analysis of changing industrial practices and how it affects the individuals involved in the upheaval. Suddenly people found the souls ripped out of their communities and they were at once both penniless and rudderless. For the four main characters in Christopher Meredith’s novel, it is the sudden absence of the relentless, almost tyrannical rule of the working shifts that governed the town’s steel mill and all that live in its wake that means they are forced to give their own shape to their lives. Opportunity or curse, the changes, and how they cope with them, really provide a telescope into the 1980s, illustrating how so many others will be forced to deal with similar dilemmas.

Michael Nobbs

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This is a reprint of a novel first published by Seren in 1988. It is set in a post-industrial town such as Ebbw Vale, or perhaps Tredegar, the author’s home town, in 1977. Thus located in place and time, it is a work of fictional realism, authentic in its depiction of working-class lives and detailed in its account of the winding down of the steelworks on which the life of the town and all the characters depends. A once great industry is coming to an end and the workers wait, unable to do anything to stop it, while their personal lives unravel and fall asunder.

The four main characters - Jack, Keith, Rob and Judith - are bound together in grief, love, work and betrayal, and have to find their own ways of coming to terms not only with the plant’s closure but with the crises in their own lives. There is also a mysterious character called simply O whom Richard Poole, in an Afterword, thinks may be nothingness, the existentialists’ néant, that is at the heart of the others’ lives. Only Keith, who is heavily into local history, seems to find consolation for the rupture that has taken place: towards the end of the novel he is learning Welsh and finding a new sense of direction. Jack moves to Reading and Wayne joins the Army.

The strength of the novel is plain to see: it is about a place and time within living memory and pulses with many of the issues with which we are all familiar. Judith, around whom the plot turns, is likely to embrace feminism as a way out of her failing marriage. The pathos of ruined lives and relationships is understated, and the spare style reflects the bleak greyness into which the community has been plunged. Even so, this is a rooted novel, firmly set in modern Wales and, in essence, deeply sympathetic and clear-eyed in its exploration of what has happened to the working class of south Wales since the closing of its heavy industries. The occasional note of humour, or at least of sardonic wisecracks, lightens the grim picture of a ravaged community and its blighted lives.

That the publisher has reissued this novel in the Seren Classics series (it has never been out of print) attests to the critical esteem in which it is held and its steady sales over the fifteen years since its first appearance. Of few novels from Welsh presses can that be said.

Meic Stephens

It is possible to use these reviews 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 adolygiadau hyn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.