I have reached day 12 of my bookish Advent calendar and also reached the first book that I have definitely owned and read – with the number of books I own and have read in the past few years it was bound to happen eventually.
The book in question is How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn which nicely fits my request for books of literary fiction as it is a worthy modern classic. I actually remember reading this book on my honeymoon (we were in Wales although not in the valleys) and I have read it, and its sequels, more than once since then. In the big clear out a few years ago before we moved into a smaller house I gave these books away because I thought that I was unlikely to read them again and I needed to save space – I shall not be keeping this book but it is a well-kept Penguin Modern Classics edition and a charity shop should be able to pass it on to a new owner easily.
This is a book about the Welsh valleys in the early twentieth century and specifically the mining communities. The author follows one family and shows us the life of the community through the events of the family. He uses the book to talk about injustice by the mine owners and also by the government in London that dictates what the people earn, how they live and even what language they speak. The book is about poverty and oppression and the need for workers to organise and challenge those in authority but it’s also about families and love. The author writes this in the first person as a young man of the community and you can hear the Welsh accent in the workd he uses and the way that the sentences are structured – it makes it very readable.
If you haven’t read this book then I do recommend it because it is a classic and beautifully written. It can be read as a companion piece with Germinal by Emile Zola which is also about an oppressed and poor mining community.
Anne Is Reading 