In the Vale

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Nofel hanesyddol wedi'i gosod ym Mro Morgannwg adeg y Chwyldro Ffrengig a Rhyfeloedd Napoleon. Caiff curad tlawd a mab ieuengaf teulu bonheddig grymus eu hieuo oherwdd eu cariad at Sarah, nyrs ac athrawes gartref plant y bonheddwr, sy'n ŵr gweddw.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

Historical novel set in the Vale of Glamorgan at about the time of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. An impecunious curate and the youngest son of a powerful landed gentry family are strangely yoked by their love for Sarah, nurse-governess to the recently widowed son's infant children.

Dosbarthu

Byddwn yn dosbarthu eitemau sydd mewn stoc o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith, fel arfer drwy Royal Mail Tracked 48. Ar gyfer archebion o flaen llaw, byddwn yn dosbarthu’r eitem o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith ar ôl ei derbyn gan ein cyflenwr.

Dispatch

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Bywgraffiad yr Awdur / Author Biography

Sam Adams is a former editor of Poetry Wales , and a former chairman of the English-language section of Yr Academi Gymreig. He edited the Collected Poems of Roland Mathias and the Collected Stories of Roland Mathias , is the author of three monographs in the 'Writers of Wales' series and a frequent contributor of poems, criticism and essays to a number of magazines. His 'Letter from Wales' column appears regularly in PN Review (Carcanet). His previous books include: Prichard's Nose , Where the Stream Ran Red and Missed Chances .

Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

This novel stretches spatially, temporally and thematically, giving the reader a vivid and full impression of its protagonist, Sarah, and life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. We begin in London but quickly move to Glamorgan, where the majority of the action takes place. Sam Adams lays the groundwork here for one of the novel’s recurring themes – the intricacies and difficulties of planning a life. For Sarah, the plan is to be governess of Ash Hall, where she cares for the two children of kind-hearted widower Richard Aubrey. But we all know what happens to the best laid plans. When Sarah and Richard begin an intense affair, things take an unexpected turn. So begins a clash between emotion and class hierarchy which echoes throughout the novel. It could be easy for the reader to forget that the Napoleonic wars are only a couple of decades away. But while never fully depicted, they are always on the edge of this novel, wrecking any sense of tranquillity that might otherwise be imposed upon it. In the Vale is split into three parts. This results in a triptych-like effect, with each section being clearly separable in focus and feel to the others, all the while working in tandem with them to create a coherent and realised story. The first is delicate, peaceful, with prose that captures the natural beauty of Ystradowen and its almost magical seasonal transformations. There is a particularly moving series of scenes during a cold winter where the snow falls hard and the log fires are built high. In the second we focus on the difficulties of maintaining the land upon which the characters live. Adams celebrates an era in which whole towns and villages would live off the land, one which is now unfamiliar to this country. The final piece is of war, of the personal and communal stresses it causes – both emotional and practical. Sons are killed and food is hard to come by. The characters who the reader has come to know so well are pushed to their very limits, leaving room for a moving ending. The style of this novel reflects the time it is set in just as well as any of its physical and practical details. With a narrative style reminiscent of >Middlemarch , In the Vale encourages its readers to cast themselves back to a time almost unrecognisable to our own. Yet it never loses sight of human emotion. It is the very human struggles the characters face and fight which give this novel its power.