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4.0 out of 5 stars
18 stories, 12 writers: generally a good read!, March 19, 2006
This review is from: Wales Half Welsh (Paperback)
Since precise detail about the contents of this anthology is lacking here, I'll provide some. Having recently read (and reviewed on Amazon.com US) the "Urban Welsh" short story collection, I was curious about how this gathering of 18 stories from a dozen authors (born in, resident in, or both, or formerly both, in Wales) compared. I liked it better. Perhaps because one of my favorite writers, Niall Griffiths, has three stories? Yes, but I found much else of (near-)equal merit.
Here's the stories included, ranked roughly by my preferences.
Starting with Griffiths. he gives an effective tale of haunting, rather more "traditional" in telling than his usual narrators fueled by drug-and-booze, in a spare and moving tale, "Fran and the Witch and Me." With one phrase tacked on to the final sentence, he masterfully twists the whole previous account--just that bit more skewed. With "Turd-burglars," as the title may indicate, it's more typical: native Welsh resenting the Anglo holiday-home buyers who appropriate with their mansions and picture windows the picturesque, its social message mixed with satire in an entertaining extended anecdote. "Stigmata" is less than three pages, but again captures in a tiny anecdote a promising subject of adolescent angst and an update of "Lord of the Flies."
Next, the editor John Williams blends commentary upon the recent radical past of today's media elite in Cardiff with a wry take on their current comfort, in "The Useful Idiot;" this same milieu occupies the previous, if less gripping story, Tessa Hadley's "The Enemy." Also, the trials of a recently divorced dad in this area vs. his own side of the capital city feature in James Hawes' "Pork." Two stories titled with the same noun make a fine citified pairing: Lloyd Robson of the determinedly lowercase style in "the vinegar mix" offers one of his trademark stories of pubcrawling and I admit although his lack of capitalization does grate a bit, this form does enhance the flow of his relentless, stream-of-semi-consciousness reports from the nearly down and passed out. Erica Woolf's "Extra Vinegar" plays off two teenaged girls and their class differences and moral gaps concisely. Her other story, "Inspiration," ambitiously puts her protagonist before an art gallery painting to challenge her perceptions. Fantasies vs. reality color Williams' "The Colonel and the Mercenary" also, revealing a bit more Welsh urban life than some of the stories, which (as with those in "Urban Welsh," tend often only to give a bit of an edge by names or places to an otherwise rather mundane "British" setting--of course this itself is a comment on today's Wales from these writers' choices--see Williams' introduction for more.) tend often towards the more homogenized texture of whatever passes for a diluted Welsh life today--again, this perhaps drives many of the writers here, who must do more with the hints, only, of difference still persisting within an Anglo-American and multi-cult society that supposedly defends diversity even as it diminishes the same.
Many stories mention Cardiff's multi-ethnic dockside area of Butetown and/or the Valleys--beyond this, barely any register of the rest of the principality's places or sights remains. Rachel Trezise's "Valley Lines," Desmond Barry's "Dalton's Box," Anna Davis' "Black Weir" all provide a cool glance at a Welsh post-industrial service-oriented economy and its bland surfaces beneath the evocative Welsh toponyms. Davis' "Hiding in Cheesy's Bedroom" narrows the focus, as the title shows; Barry's "Fresh Start" and Trezza Azzopardi's "Shorthold" depict this flourescent, garish, but ultimately dispiriting consumer culture, or its lack, and its effect on fragile souls.
Unlike "Urban Welsh," the ratio of winners to also-rans is much higher here. I only found two stories not entirely to my liking, and neither of these lacked distinction--they just aren't to my own tastes. Malcolm Pryce has made a big splash with his cultish novels on detective send-ups in a place called Aberstywyth, but from another dimension than that seaside college town, where film noir meets BBC "stupid but not unfunny" humor meets surrealistic collegiate ramblings. "Human See, Human Do" follows this format. It has its moments of deadpan wit. Sean Burke's earnest "The Trials of Mahmood Mattan," as the title promises, dramatizes a 1950s case of criminality and framing the wrong man and while it makes its points predictably, would have worked better as journalism or "creative non-fiction" rather than as a short story.
A dubious but intermittently enjoyable bonus: the cutesy clever authors' notes, their diary excerpts, and snapshots appended. All in all, even though I preferred some stories far more than others, the quality of this volume should ensure a place on many shelves of those readers wishing a panoramic view of the more sub/urban, constrained, and introverted temperaments that have replaced singing miners and doughty shepherds as the common denominator for many of today's millions living in Wales.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A collection of diverse themes and perspectives, March 12, 2005
This review is from: Wales Half Welsh (Paperback)
So, who says the Welsh have no contemporary fiction writers? John Williams edits a collection of eleven new Welsh writers to draw upon the best of young writers, creating a collection of diverse themes and perspectives united only by their heritage. Any who would believe Wales devoid of literary figures need only consult WALES HALF WELSH to see otherwise.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wales Half Welsh, January 26, 2005
This review is from: Wales Half Welsh (Paperback)
Wales Half Welsh is a great collection of short stories by todays most prominant Welsh writers, it is a must have for anyone who loves the work of Niall Griffiths, Irvin Welsh and other great modern authors from Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
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