Customer Reviews

On the Black Hill

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On the Black Hill is an elegantly written homage to the inelegant life of rural Wales, a life in which no one ever strays far from the farm--there are few opportunities and little motivation to do so. Spartan lives are enriched by stories and gossip, slights are never forgotten, feuds reach epic intensity, and bottled-up frustrations simmer till they explode. Through rich and vivid descriptions of the minutiae of daily existence, we come to know twin brothers Lewis and Ben Jones as they grow up and are shaped by their family and their small community. The townspeople become our own friends or enemies, depending on their behavior towards the twins, and we empathize with them as they use their limited resources to struggle with the Big Questions which concern us all--questions of life, love, spirituality, death, cruelty, justice, and ultimately, happiness. By paring life to the bone here, Chatwin gives us a classic example of the adage, "Less is more."

On the Black Hill is, on the face of it, a paradoxically British novel to emerge from the pen of a writer renowned for his curiousity for travel, the exotic and the fantastic. Following on from the Viceroy of Ouidah, a fantastical story set in 19th Century West Africa, 'On the Black Hill' tells the story of two twin boys, Benjamin and Lewis who they spend the entirety of their lives farming in rural Wales.

Chatwin masterfully captures the subtelties of the Welsh countryside - the roughshod agricultural basis to everyday life, the elitism and mannerisms of the gentry, the subtle changes in the weather, the dark, brooding landscapes and the eccentric and intriguing characters of the local community.

For my money, Chatwin is at his best when using his talent for descriptive prose to describe the everyday rather than the fantastic. His eye for detail and story telling enable him to bring the lives of insular rural types to life in a way that sets 'On the Black Hill' apart from the large body of books written about British country life. The plot develops gently and gradually, with events such as the First World War and the development of the motor car affecting the community in realistic and entertaining ways. One emphathises with the characters as their lives are shaped and developed and the 20th Century history of the area is bought to life in a manner that few other rural novels manage.

Chatwin the nomad actually excells when involved much closer to home than one might imagine.

All Bruce Chatwin's books seem to have a provincial side to them. Set in outlandish places in all corners of the Earth, they all have a sort of question mark attached to them, perhaps asking: Now, what's going on here? "On the Black Hill," is, I maintain, set in as outlandish a spot as any of them. The Welsh countryside has bred just as odd examples of humanity as the green hills of Kentucky or the wide veldt of South Africa. Yet Chatwin sees through them all, down to some sort of common denominator, and what we have in this book is the most human story to issue from this pen. The story of the twins will not only delight for its old-fashioned setting and eccentric but somehow so British behaviour, it will also draw you into Chatwin's elegant prose with its remarkable tempo (you might almost call it metre) and ability to colour scenes with gouache-like softness and light. In fact, coming to Chatwin through "On the Black Hill" may not be such a good idea. Read "The Songlines" first, and failing that, read "Utz" either before or after. In any case, although this short-lived modern writer has not left us the overwhelming legacy we might normally have expected, there is sufficient material to keep you occupied and thinking about your own and Chatwin's world, for some time to come. And in the end you'll see that Bruce Chatwin's not provincial at all.

The conjunction of considerable brouha surrounding release with my place of residence in Central Australia compelled me to read Chatwin's ,'Songlines'. The disappointment with this inaccurate and sloppily structured book deterred further curiosity in his oeuvre. What a loss! 'Black Hill' is a brilliant description of rural Wales, resonant with some of the sweetest nature observations, and the minuatae of rural existence. Chatwin is on the top of his game in this earlier work. No wonder his press expected 'Songlines' to be the magnum that would establish an enduring reputation. The subject matter is generated by the curious tale of geriatric twin brothers who have barely ventured beyond a twenty mile radius of Black Hill. Their 80 years are sketched in without psychologising their inhibitions. For a novel that does explore those dimensions, read Michel Tournier's,'Gemini'. But Chatwin's work has an unhurried pacing spiced with effortless aliterations('spider webs, wavering white with dew, were stitched over the dead grass'...'croziers of young bracken curled up through the cow-parsley')that seem conjured from the mists hanging over the Hill. He's as unobtrustive as the twins, cocooned as they are from the turmoils of the century, beyond their pasture. The years roll on, loved ones and rivals, all pass without Chatwin resorting to Thomas Hardy's melodramatic coicidences to paste the seasons together with wilfull moralising.I mention Hardy as Chatwin refers to him in the text. I did think of John Berger's work at times. And that's fine recommendation from me.

Along with 'Songlines,' 'On the Black Hill,' is Chatwin's most accessible work. For those unsmitten with Chatwinitis, these two gems of rich storytelling give an idea of just how talented a writer we lost with Mr. Chatwin's premature demise in 1988. Whereas 'Songlines' attempts to dissect our wandering passions, 'On the Black Hill' tries to answer the opposite: why we stay where we are.

Set in the Wye river borderlands between England and Wales, this most complete of Chatwin's works follows the daily toils, sorrows and rare joys of a Welsh farming family. Chatwin guides us through the vicissitudes of Amos Jones and his English wife, Mary Latimore. Yet, the story's real center is the life of their twin offspring, Benjamin and Lewis. The two grew up inseparable from one another. Yet, whilst they share the same hardships of rural life, they differ sharply from each other. Lewis is his father's child: a rough, taciturn man-child whose thoughts and desires rarely stray beyond the farm and the fields. His escape and simultaneously, only connection with the outside world, is his fascination with airplanes. In his few spare moments, Lewis collects articles about the newest innovations in flight. In rare moments, Lewis dreams of flying off to distant lands, freeing himself from the bonds of family, routine and the land. Yet, his alter-ego, Benjamin, always manages to hold him back. Shy, withdrawn, and sensitive, Benjamin takes after his mother, cultivating the more 'feminine' side of farm life: cooking, reading and keeping house. As if Chatwin wanted show the sheer interdependence of both types, Benjamin and Lewis grow into one person as it were, a yin and yang of the human type. Neither can exist without the other for long. When Benjamin gets drafted into the First World War, Lewis feels the torments and humiliations his brother undergoes at boot camp. Likewise, when Lewis 'threatens' to marry, Benjamin falls into deep depression and is saved from death only when his brother comes home again, alone.

From before the Great War to the early 1970's, Chatwin sketches the life of the Jones with incredible detail. As with all Chatwin works, the diamonds are in the pictures he paints, the characters he details. Every level of caste-ridden England and egaliterian Wales is represented with pithy accuracy. The overbearing and decadent English landlords flit away their estates with drink and profligacy while the dour Welsh peasants suffer in dirt and dearth with the hope for a 'better world to come.' The English are all staid High-Church tea drinkers, while the Welsh wander between pub and chapel. Ethnography isn't far from the surface as Chatwin's portrayal of the English-Welsh symbosis mirrors that of the twins. Two brothers so different, yet lost without the other.

Here, like in all Chatwin works, grand meanings are difficult to uncover. Unlike his predecessor of sorts, Thomas Hardy, Chatwin fails to get into the psychological nitty-gritty of why his characters act the way they do. Instead, we're given a canvas of life spread across seventy years and asked merely to observe, sympathize and maybe see ourselves in one of the faces. In this way, 'On the Black Hill' resembles Kent Haruf's testimony to the American Midwest, 'Plainsong,' another novel about two brothers who chose to stay put rather than set out for something new, different, and better. And perhaps this is the message of the work: life isn't elsewhere, it's right under your nose. Coming from the highpriest of wanderlust himself, I'd say that's quite an insight.

I had to read this book for a book report...well actually it was a art college project to read and illustrate it. The more I got into the book the more I saw the characters so easily come alive in my imagination. I felt sad, elated and almost annoyed at these characters...they were conveyed so well by the late Bruce Chatwin. I want to read more of his books, this has been the perfect introduction to the rest of his written work.

Although each episode seems simple and mundane, they determine in important ways the men these two identical twins become. Even in the isolation of a small town in Wales the changes of the twentieth century are nothing short of remarkable, perhaps, because they are seen through such innocent eyes. The devotion of the two brothers to each other is admirable and beautiful. This portrait of one life lived by two people make this book an exceptional experience. The writing is excellent

This is a nice, quiet little novel to pick up when you don't want anything upsetting or scary or suspenseful to read. It's very much place-driven and character-driven rather than dependent on an exciting plot. Chatwin covered 80 years in 250 pages, so there's no excess prose or boring passages. The beauty of the book is the way the author carries you away to a sheltered little farming community on the border of Wales and England. With very few words he richly creates all the small-town provincial characters you'd expect for that time and place. There's the gossip, the crazy person, the greedy one, the pious one---and then all the interlopers "from off" that the locals don't trust because they're new. The landscape and seasons and lifestyle are also vividly created with few words.

The story follows the lives of Benjamin and Lewis Jones. They are identical twins who are so attached to each other that they're more like one person than two. Born in 1900, they spend their entire lives on their farm, with only one holiday away at the age of ten. It sounds boring, but the book has its own special charm.

Bruce Chatwin, the writer of this novel, is mainly known for his travel books. Exotic places and reflections on travelling were his specialty. Yet "On the Black Hill" is possibly his best book, though set entirely in as unexotic a locale as possible, the borderlands between Wales and England. Chatwin's evocation of the peculiar atmosphere of a small, backwards farming community in Wales and the odd characters it produces is at once more lively and more tragic than any travel book could be.

The book revolves around a more or less chronological biography of twin brothers in a farmstead in Wales, written in sequential flashbacks. There is something of Xavier de Maistre in this: at the beginning of the novel, the twins are portrayed at the end of their life, living together in their isolated farm with a number of odd and antique items around them. These items then frame the telling of the tale of their life and of the people they encountered in it, so that in the telling each item becomes familiar and takes up its place in the sentimental narrative of the twins' experiences. In this manner, some of the attachment they have for their own place and their few possessions is projected onto the reader, which creates very skilfully a sense of identification with what are otherwise two very obviously highly weird people in a rather backwards and uninviting rural village.

Chatwin's book is remarkable because it is very compelling, a page-turner almost, while almost nothing of significance happens in it. But because the brothers grow up so stunted by their upbringing and environment, and because of the total social and mental helplessness of all people in the community, many events that would normally be considered minor and of little impact in our lives become enormous incursions into the farm life. This gives them a meaning and a tragic nature one would not normally assign them. At no point does the book even leave the direct surroundings of the Welsh borderlands, and yet it is more intriguing than many a story of Patagonia. An accomplishment.

A memorable story of the human condition from beginning to
end. Characters are well developed and relationships are
complex with a simplicity of feeling underlying the actions.
I read this book about 2 years ago, and I can still remember
enjoying it.