Caryl Lewis has written widely for television, the stage, and for children. She lives near Aberystwyth.

Bound together by blood ties, Martha, Jac and Shanco live on a farm in mid-Wales where their lives unfold in the eerie half-presence of their dead parents.

Glimmers of understanding punctuate their relationship with one another, but unspoken animosity seems to be the most potent ingredient in their sibling cohabitation. Tension between the three underscores their empathy each with the rhythms of nature, rather than with kith and kin.


"Strong writing which often sparkles. The talent for expression is at times superb, rising way above the challenge of translating. Gwen Davies's translation succeeds wholly in persuading you to read the book. The language chosen is warm, keeping the novel's truth... you can be confident that those who can't read the original will not miss out."
Golwg

"a graphic and beautifully-described portrayal of farm life and place, a real confrontation with a particular kind of existence."
Babel Guide to Welsh Fiction, Boulevard Books, Oxford 2007

“Harsh, lyrical, devastating, Caryl Lewis’ Welsh-language novel of rural loneliness and loss sings with a bitter poetry in this translation by Gwen Davies. Subject and setting are canonical: the cycle of a tragic year, with ageing siblings marooned on the hill farm inherited from parents who fixed their fate. Did Martha and her brother have ‘no choice’? Season by season, Lewis shows the pull of the place even as she tells how it ruins its people.”
Boyd Tonkin, The Independent, 2 November 2007

Listed in Publications of the Week, 14 September, 2007 www.thebooksellercom

“Strong writing which often sparkles. The talent for expression is at times superb, rising way above the challenge of translating. Gwen Davies' translation succeeds wholly in persuading you to read the book. The language chosen is warm, keeping the novel's truth... you can be confident that those who can't read the original will not miss out.”
www.amazon.co.uk, September 2007

“The poetry of the original language holds the text together like tapestry canvas, with the English like sinuous threads overlaying it.”
The Big Issue, 8 October 2007

“Congratulations to the translator! It reads really well but you don’t think you are reading a translation, which is the sleight of hand which means that it is a really good one!”
John Barnie, poet

“A story of the long slow retreat of an old way on the Welsh hills.”
Babel Guide to Welsh Literature