 Join Americymru
|
AMERI |
|
CYMRU | 
Our Store
|
In And Out of TheGoldfish Bowlby Rachel Trezise |
||
| The
massive underground warren of interconnected
passages and coalfaces accessed from those collieries powered the
Industrial Revolution , fuelled the creation of the British Empire and
powered the royal Navy through two world wars.The culture which this
industry spawned in the ribbon like towns which snaked along the
valleys on the surface was always savage and brutal. And yet this
savage culture birthed a vibrant militant political
tradition....the trade union movement....the Labour
Party....the foundation of the National Health Service. It also spawned
a thriving chapel culture which helped to preserve many of the most
positive aspects of traditional Welsh culture particularly musical
traditions like the gymanfa ganu etc. This book is, at least in part, a record of what happens to a community when two centuries of history and tradition are wiped out almost overnight. Rachel Trezise describes the Rhondda in the following terms:- "The thing with the Rhondda, was the constant lack of choice. Understandably, some people would choose to live as far away as possible from the bustle of nine to five, club opening licences in the city and other hassles a place like London unfortunately offers. However, the Rhondda was neither city nor country; it is a valley made up of towns, and in between you could say , if the rising crime was not so rife, and heroin abuse and calculated murder, building society armed hold-ups and all these things which the city of Cardiff regularly underwent, didn't happen in the valley, but they did, quite often. So, truthfully I could say the place where I grew up is physically as violent and as loud as any metropolitan dwelling, yet mentally the valley could be as compact as a West Virginian, out of time and date KKK town." Lest this description be thought somewhat one-sided and jaundiced it must be remembered that the protagonist is a an abused, bored, drug-addled and occasionally suicidal teenager. The Rhondda Valley for her, is a place to escape from . Its once-proud but now moribund traditions and decaying social fabric are all contributory factors to her misery. Other factors include all-pervasive alcoloholism and sexual abuse. The main appeal of this book is the fact that that she survives with her sanity and dignity intact, despite the odds. This is not just another book about bored and pampered teenagers who feel compelled to indulge in acts of self destruction because no one could possibly understand their pain. It is a record of a struggle to assert a basic human identity in a profoundly hostile and challenging environment.
|
||
Fresh Applesby Rachel TreziseOk
I.ll go out on a limb and say that Rachel Trezise is one
of the
finest short story writers alive today. She writes about
poverty and
youth in a post-miners strike South Wales with particular
emphasis on
the Rhondda valley. Whilst her evocations of that area will
delight
people who are acquainted with it, her themes are
sufficiently
universal to entrance readers everywhere. Her stories are firmly
anchored in their own geographical context and as a result
they are
able to project a universal significance.
|
||
|
It
was once
fashionable to praise short story writers by describing their works as
'Chekovian'. Rachel Trezise's stories are not 'Chekovian'. They do not
follow the 'Life in the day of" approach of the best of Chekov and deal
instead with very concrete and structured incidents in the classic
short story tradition. Indeed one of her stories entitled 'Chickens'
has a morally didactic tone reminiscent of Katherine Mansfield's
classic tale "The Doll's House".
None of the above is intended to leave the reader with the impression that Trezise's stories are lacking in humor. Indeed humor is one of their strongest points. In one story after a chance encounter on a railway platform a young girl enquires of her male escort::- "What' the thing with comics? You follow women home, but you're gay. You're thirty years old but you have a Spiderman comic in your bag." Rachel Trezise has a fine eye for the sometimes tragic but more frequently ludicrous details of modern living. Her account of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood in contemporary South Wales is as humorous and poignant as it is accurate. All in all this collection is first rate and belongs in the "must read" category. |
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From the World Wide Web Cats That Look Like Hitler Welsh Toast Arranging Suicide Jumper Bottle Blade Mozart |
