Martha Jack & Shanco is a strong
and captivating novel which focuses on the story of two elderly brothers
and their sister who are bound by family circumstances to a life of
hardship on a rural farm in south west Wales. Primeval in setting
and content, this is a novel where the land itself with the beasts
of the farm, and the raucous crows animate the narrative. Lewis brings
life to the Welsh rural tradition of farms being passed from generation
to generation, and the problems that this can cause. The siblings
have had their home passed down to them, and as they cannot afford
to sell up and split the profits, are tied to it indefinitely.
Caryl paints a picture of the siblings’
life on the farm perfectly. She throws us glimpses of the family’s
history as we are let in to feel the love, the hate, the fear and
the desperation surrounding them as they venture ever closer to
the end of their lives.
Martha, Jack & Shanco was tranlslated from its original Welsh
by Gwen Davies.
Gwen is co-translator, with the author of Seren Wyn ar Gefndir
Gwyn (White Star, Parthian). She works as a fiction
and creative editor, and has published on Welsh writing in English
and Welsh-language literature in anthologies and magazines.
ISBN 9781905762316
£8.99
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