Library of Wales: The Caves of Alienation

At the centre of Stuart Evans’ ambitious and enthralling novel is Michael Caradock, a well-known writer whose life has ended violently on an isolated Welsh island. The circumstances of his death are mysterious, but then his whole life and work are subjects of controversy. Are his work and death connected, and if so, on what level? In The Caves of Alienation, first published in 1977, Stuart Evans, displays the accomplished hand of a master craftsman in verse and prose, but also makes clear the startling ambition to produce a Welsh novel whose technical brilliance and intellectual power would allow it to take its place, unashamedly, in the ranks of European 20th Century fiction. He succeeded. The challenge for writers and readers is to catch up with him.
The Caves of Alienation is multi-layered in its dazzling demonstration of virtuosity of style and narrative perspective -literally different novels within the novel ... that it is easy to underplay the thread that links fictive reviews to screenplay to cod biographies and the ventriloquism of reminiscence. For its story, constant and disturbing, is the touching and intriguing account of Michael Caradock, the alienated boy who lives his life as a man and a writer by soaring imaginatively away only to be forever and fatally tied down by the past. -- Publisher: Parthian Books
This fabulous 1977 classic might be long, dense and demanding, but it’s also seriously absorbing and often drily humorous. I’d rank it alongside, say, the works of John Fowles (whose Daniel Martin came out the same year) and Umberto Eco for its ambitious reach and unashamed erudition, and it shares the central concept and conceit of A.S. Byatt’s Possession, though predating it by close on twenty years. As he approaches middle age, successful fiction writer and essayist Michael Caradock seeks solace and seclusion at an isolated house on the beautiful estuary of Glanmor. It is an unexpected return to a Wales he has claimed to despise and which he fled as soon as he finished school, heading first to Oxford’s ivory towers and then on to the literary world of London. Caradock has a brilliant, if troubled, mind and has achieved sufficient literary status to give rise to numerous books, articles, television and radio programmes, and even an official biography – an industry that burgeons when he is found dead in his home. The multi-voice narrative − comprising extracts from Caradock’s fiction and essays; criticism and analysis of his oeuvre; snippets of TV and radio documentaries, and commentaries by his friends and acquaintances − is consummate. So enthralling and convincing, in fact, that I found myself wanting to read the books written by and about this entirely fictitious author. You want to get to know Michael Caradock just as you might want to get to know a real person. The former is patently impossible, but perhaps the latter is, as well: one of the book’s central themes is precisely “the unknowableness or irreducibility (...) of the human individual”. The Caves of Alienation is an extraordinarily beautiful and intelligent novel that I would recommend without hesitation − thank goodness it’s been re-issued for those of us who missed it first time round. -- Suzy Ceulan Hughes @ www.gwales.com