Tom Bullough

This quiet story of a small hill farm in the Welsh border country is clearly something of a labour of love. The main characters are three generations of a farming family and the story moves from 1941 to 2011, with chapters typically five years apart.

There are plenty of descriptions of the land and of farming methods, and plenty of local dialect words some of which are beyond the scope of a standard dictionary, but these are rarely essential to understanding the story, which is largely about the way farming has changed, and the community has changed with it.

Another strand is the change in attitudes to unmarried mothers - at the emotional centre of the book is Etty, who is forced to marry the proud but old fashioned and older farmer Idris while pregnant with Oliver, whose father has deserted her. Oliver is a giant, hard-working but hot-headed often drawn into fighting. His child Cefin is the product of a short-lived affair with Naomi, a student teacher and aspiring writer who refuses to sacrifice her career to the farm.

Other chapters cover events of wider significance to the area - the harsh winter of 1947 and the foot-and-mouth epidemic and consequent sheep slaughter of 2001, and the demolition of the local railway in 1963.

This is not a book that will appeal to thrill-seekers, but it has a quiet beauty and works very successfully on its own terms.… (altro)

A family saga based on the life of Oliver born in 1941 to Etty and Idris Hamer. As the story progresses, it is slowly revealed that Oliver is not Idris' son. Etty came to the marriage as a 17 year old and pregnant by a character never revealed in the book. Idris married her, fully aware of her condition.

The writing is a very adumbrated style, with details scattered like crumbs through the manuscript. It is also written in dialect, with the use of regional words (mostly nouns) that are not defined and certainly don't appear in any dictionaries available to me. A glossary would have been helpful.

This is a novel of very good character sketches of the main characters over seven decades. There are strong themes of the connection of the characters to the land and to the way that working on that land evolves over Oliver's lifetime.

This was a hard book to read. Fortunately, I read it as an e-book and could use Xray view to refresh my memory on the lesser characters when needed. Somethings are left unexplained and without a hint of explanation. I still don't understand why Oliver was dressed as a woman when he got into the fight that landed him in jail.

I recommend reading the author's own writing about the book: http://www.tombullough.com/addlands/… (altro)

Konstantin was a serendipitous find at the library. It’s a fairly simple story, but beautifully written, and there are some heart-stopping moments to propel the narrative along.

Based on the real life story of the Russian/Soviet scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, this novella tells the story of the emergence of his interest in rocketry and astronautics, and how he overcame all manner of difficulties to become one of the founders of space travel. But the book is not a fictionalised biography, it is slices of an imagined life, focussing on the childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood of its subject. And Russia, with its magnificent landscapes and brutal weather, is almost a character too.

The book begins with Kostya’s childhood in Ryazan on the river Oka where his father Eduard Ignatyevich is a forester. He is an adventurous child with an enquiring mind but he falls victim to scarlet fever and is left with residual deafness. Because he cannot hear properly and his mother Maria Ivanova fusses over him, he is teased by his cousin and almost drowns in the frozen river. It would have been a loss to the world if he had.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/04/14/konstantin-by-tom-bullough/… (altro)

An annoying book. The tale of a farming family in the welsh borders picked out by the years of freak weather (47,63,76) and foot and mouth outbreaks. But it is sketched in with quick strokes making it hard to see what the author is getting at. And throwing in lots of dialect words gives the impression that the author is sitting at home admiring in the mirror his latest style of beard and its sccompanying tattos. Too fashionable, too show off. In the cracks there is some good writing. But I won't bee seeking out his other books.… (altro)