Warmly devastating, West by Carys Davies is an engrossing historical tradicomedy, one told like a potent dream or myth. A decade or so after the Lewis and Clark expedition, John Cyrus Bellman, a widower and mule breeder, reads in the newspaper of the discovery of “monstrous bones…sunk in the salty Kentucky mud” and is convinced that “the same gigantic monsters still [walk] the earth in the unexplored territories of the west.” Promising to write frequently, Bellman leaves his preteen daughter, Bess, on his Pennsylvania farm and heads west, embarking on a so-called fool's errand. So he sets out alone bearing gifts and trinkets for any Native Americans he might meet along the way. He connects with a young Swanee boy, an unforgettable character and together they trek across thousands of miles, through brutal winters and harsh conditions. Both Bellman and the boy depend on each other for survival, although they do not speak each other languages.

And what follows is the story of Bess’ years of waiting and Bellman’s wandering. West is about extinction and collective loss, extinction of the past (the extinction of mammoths) and the genocide of Native Americans. But it also shows how ambition causes the white man to become just as lost as those he may have displaced. Both Bellman and the swanne boy are lost characters. West is also about destroying the myth of fated journeys. It is a book that kills the romance of exploring the West. And it is a coming of age story. West is many things.

To say much about how this novel ends would be to spoil its depth, its pain, its beauty.

This short novel is structured with great artistry. Read it. Now.

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Cy Bellman has been captured by an idea. Giant beasts that just maybe wander beyond the fringe of civilization. The West. He determines that he must go see for himself. Despite the fact that he is leaving behind a 10 year old daughter, Bess. But how long will he be gone? And who will protect Bess in his absence?

This is a beautifully written short novel. Davies wonderfully evokes the single-minded obsession that often arose in the 19th century. But the real genius here is Bess, who must fend almost entirely for herself with many threats rising. Distasteful threats. Anxiety builds and, well. It’s a short novel, but don’t race to end. Just enjoy the beautiful writing.

Highly recommended. ( )

4.5*

Carys Davies’s debut novel West is a work of historical fiction set on the American frontier in the early 19th Century. John Cyrus Bellman, a thirty-five year old widower and mule breeder, reads about sensational discoveries of fossils in Kentucky and, for the first time since the death of his wife, his imagination is fired up. He feels that he has found his calling – that of travelling West in a bid to see the bones for himself, and possibly trace the giant creatures which might still be roaming deep in uncharted territory. The scepticism of friends and relatives does not deter him, and he departs upon this quest, even though this means leaving his beloved daughter Bess behind him, in the care of his sister. Thus the novel unfolds, alternating between an account of John’s voyage and a description of Bess’s journey into adulthood.

Carys Davies has published two collections of short stories and she brings to a larger canvas the pithiness and conciseness which characterize the best short-story writers. At 160 pages, West might be better described as a novella, and yet it often has the epic feel of a much longer novel. It is a “western” in the best sense of the word, evoking the vast open spaces of an unknown America ripe for discovery. But it is also an intimate and poetic work, as the third person narration delves into the innermost thoughts of Bess, John and, at a later stage, the young Native American who accompanies John on his journey. The fable-like simplicity of the novel’s language does not hinder it from facing big issues head-on – endings, beginnings and survivals; fate, faith and the nature of belief; personal and collective memory. West is a quick read but I suspect that its images will long resonate in my mind. ( )

Anti-western set in 1800s America. Cy Bellman is a mule breeder who lives with his ten-year-old daughter, Bess, and his sister, Julie. His wife has died, and he has become restless. His interest is spurred by a news article about gigantic bones discovered in the west. He leaves Bess with Aunt Julie and travels in search of the large animals (obviously dinosaurs). He believes they are still living and roaming the countryside. He enlists help from a young Shawnee man, called Old Woman from a Distance. Cy does not realize he is on a fool’s errand until it is too late.

Cy faces dangers inherent in nature, and in the meantime, Bess faces dangers from humankind. It is told from the perspectives of both Cy and Bess, providing the views of the one who leaves and the one who is left behind. This is a story of the arrogance of men in the Old West who minimize the abilities of Native Americans and women. The one issue I had with it is that the timeline is a bit off historically. It is poetically written with vivid descriptions of the natural world. It reminds me of Don Quixote, and, I believe, parallels some of its messages. ( )

In the early years of the nineteenth century Cyrus Bellman leaves his farm and his daughter in Pennsylvania to head west. He wears his thick woollen coat and his brand new stovepipe hat (all the better to impress any Native Americans he might encounter). As trade goods he takes his dead wife's blouse, her steel knitting needles, her copper thimble and a tin trunk full of beads - objects are important in this book. All because after reading a newspaper account of the discovery of the bones of massive and unknown creatures in a Kentucky bog, Bellman's mind will not let go of the conviction that the creatures must be alive somewhere in the relatively unexplored West, and he is determined to find them. Perhaps not such a strange conviction in an age when the idea of extinction itself was relatively new.

The giant beasts drifted across his mind like the vast creature-shaped clouds he saw when he stood in the yard behind the house and tipped his head up to the sky. When he closed his eyes, they moved behind the lids in the darkness, slowly, silently, as if through water—they walked and they drifted, pictures continually blooming in his imagination and then vanishing into the blackness beyond it, where he could not grasp them, the only thing left in his head the thought of them being alive and perambulating out there in the unknown, out there in the west beyond the United States in some kind of wilderness of rivers and trees and plains and mountains and there to behold with your own two eyes if you could just get yourself out there and find them.

The novel alternates from the viewpoints of Cyrus and his guide (an unfortunately named Shawnee boy called Old Woman From a Distance) in the West and Cyrus's ten year old daughter Bess who has been left behind with her Aunt Julie in Pennsylvania. Each of these three characters tries to make sense of the world in which they find themselves, with Bess facing dangers at home no less real than those faced by her father.

Carys Matthews won thé Wales Book of the Year Fiction Award in 2019 and was a worthy winner in my opinion. (I don't know why L.T. seems to think she is Australian - it doesn't mention anything about Australia on her own website.) With sparse prose and each word carefully placed, this short book – more of a novella rather than a novel – is beautifully written and lays bare the unexpressed emotions of Bess and her father.

Highly recommended. ( )