THE BOOK FAIR

Review:

British author, Richard Llewellyn, was born Vivian Lloyd in Hendon, of Greater London, 1906.  The author of many books, Llewellyn won the National Book Award in 1940 for “How Green Was My Valley”.  Llewellyn entertained many interests in life: he worked in a coal mine, studied hotel management in Italy, covered the Nuremberg Trials in Germany, lived in Israel for a time, and later moved to Dublin, Ireland, where he died in 1983.

 

The story of the Morgan’s, a close knit Welsh family who reside in a mining town, in South Wales.  Huw, the youngest son of the Morgan children, on the verge of leaving his home, narrates his family’s story.

Huw parent’s met when young, fell in love, married and had several children.  Huw’s father, Gwilym and brothers Ivor, Ianto, Davy, Gwilym and Owen, worked the mines and lived in a house, for which his father paid rent, for twenty years. 

The beautifully written, descriptive novel depicts the relationships between the family members with a deep, emotional intensity and with an unusual sensitivity of love for home and family.   The author details friendships, hostilities, jealousies, loyalties and love with a picturesque view of the era and the climate of social change.