This is a beautifully written, rather unsettling novel that looks at our deep human need for a clear sense of identity and belonging, and the way in which our sense of who we are and where we fit in the world is shaped, and often distorted, not only by our childhood experiences but also by several generations of family history. Jonathon has spent his life travelling aimlessly around the world and it is not until his mother dies that he realizes he has simply been replicating his father’s feckless wanderings, but on a grander scale. Moving to live in the isolated cottage on Anglesey that his mother has unexpectedly left him, Jonathon tries to find his place in a small circle of local acquaintances: taciturn Goronwy, eccentric brothers Bub and Nut, and the reclusive old man, Johnny, who invites Jonathon into his home and, like some strange North-Walian Scheherazade, binds the younger man to him, in life and beyond, by telling him the tales not only of his own childhood, but also of his father’s, grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s extraordinary travels.A great opening sentence and first paragraph had me hooked immediately and I idled my way blissfully through the Prologue and Part One, savouring the words, the sentences, the descriptions, the sheer quality of the writing. Then, suddenly, in Part Two, the structure of the narrative appears to disintegrate and fragment, leaving the reader feeling confused, struggling to identify the “I” who is speaking in each chapter. It took me a while to realize that this is a clever mirroring of the gradual disintegration of Jonathon’s mind, causing the reader to experience the character’s creeping sense of madness and disconnectedness. It’s a bit spooky!Anglesey, with its strange blend of claustrophobic, labyrinthine lanes and desolate expanses of emptiness, is the perfect setting.
