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Sto caricando le informazioni... Addlands: A Novel (originale 2016; edizione 2016)di Tom Bullough (Autore)
Informazioni sull'operaAddlands di Tom Bullough (2016)
Historical Fiction (34) Sto caricando le informazioni...
Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. 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/ 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.
Black and white images may punctuate Bullough's novel - of blackberries, blasted trees, budding branches - but there is nothing sepia-tinged about this decades-spanning Welsh borders farming saga. The members of the Hamer family, whose lives it chronicles, are realised so fully, and with such vitality, that there seems no doubt about the blood running through their veins, and although it is inevitably - although far from exclusively - a story that moves in the direction of loss, it never descends to hand-wringing: the vanishing salmon, wildflowers and bees are noted and no more. Like many nature writers, Bullough has a flair for alchemical descriptions, thrillingly repurposing adjectives and verbs. But although he also clearly savours the tang of his characters' tongues, their speech is never fetishised, and any shadow of earnestness is dispelled by occasional, gloriously unexpected sunbursts of humour. MenzioniElenchi di rilievo
A complex family with a tortured secret, the Hamers live on a large homestead in Radnorshire, Wales. Idris, the unbending patriarch and tyrant of the family, is a man suspicious of any change. Etty, his indomitable wife, is a woman born into a world unequipped to deal with her. Oliver, their only son, is a junior boxing champion turned hellraising local legend. A novel concerned both with the huge changes of 20th-century rural life, and that life in its eternal details. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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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. ( )