Martha, Jack and Shanco - Caryl Lewis
 
 
 

 

 

  

 

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