Martha, Jack & Shanco

‘Harsh, lyrical, devastating, Caryl Lewis’ Welsh-language novel of rural loneliness and loss sings with a bitter poetry in this translation by Gwen Davies. Subject and setting are canonical: the cycle of a tragic year, with ageing siblings marooned on the hill farm inherited from parents who fixed their fate. Did Martha and her brothers have “no choice”? Season by season, Lewis shows the pull of the place even as she tells how it ruins its people.’ – Boyd Tonkin, The Independent ‘Strong writing which often sparkles. The talent for expression is at times superb, rising way above the challenge of translating. Gwen Davies’ translation succeeds wholly in persuading you to read the book. The language chosen is warm, keeping the novel’s truth... you can be confident that those who can’t read the original will not miss out.’ – Golwg ‘Martha Jack & Shanco is a raw and often disturbing novel by Lewis, focusing on a farming family in rural west Wales who are dislocated from society and modernity.’ – Buzz Bound together by blood ties, Martha, Jack and Shanco live on a farm in west Wales where their lives unfold in their eerie half- presence of their dead parents. Glimmers of understanding punctuate their relationship with one another, but unspoken animosity seems to be the most potent ingredient. A lament for the prizes and the price of nurturing a landscape: an antidote for anyone impatient with those who choose to stay in one place. -- Publisher: Parthian Books
This book is the first English translation of Caryl Lewis’s novel, which won the 2005 Welsh-language Wales Book of the Year Award. It is easy to see why the book won the award – it is an incredibly powerful, well-written story. Martha, Jack and Shanco are three siblings scraping a living on Graig-ddu, their family farm in mid-Wales. The book chronicles their struggle to keep the farm going in a changing world. Each of the three protagonists has his/her own ideas and beliefs which direct their words and actions, so the reader is allowed access to three points of view on the same events. The imagery is especially strong, and it makes you feel as if you are actually there, watching the story unfold but unable to do anything to stop the virtual train wreck you are certain is going to happen. I would not recommend Martha, Jack and Shanco as light reading, but I would definitely recommend it. It is a sad, beautiful story that needs to be read. -- Julie Jones @ www.gwales.com