Novel about the injustice, poverty and the gritty working-class life of the mining villages.

Released on Saturday, January 10, 2004 at Pickwicks in Wien, Wien Austria.

Found at Pickwick's in the cabinet.

This book contains three stories set in the valleys of deprived areas of Wales, where people are concerned with finding work and the corruption of those in power, as well as doing a lot of thinking about life in general. This book treats poverty in an honest, non-sentimental way and rather as a fact of life than something to be complained about, which makes a refreshing change to how other books treat it. I really enjoyed the book and the stories and characters are very convincing and likeable. It is well written and sounds as if the author really understands his characters.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It's about an area very close to where I was born, and I know all about the problems that the region has suffered (terrible conditions while the mines were open; almost total unemployment when they were shut, etc., etc.). Thomas neither shies away from these issues nor does he dwell on them, much as the people themselves must have done. The locals are not portrayed, as is so often done, as backward, but merely deprived, and there is real compassion for their situation. But the best thing about the book is the dialogue, with all its wry humour ("wry" is a word only used in literary reviews for such humour as this; it is never used elsewhere).

I've found myself thinking in the dialect used in the book since reading it - instead of "people", using "voters" or "elements", and, instead of "thing", using "article" or "item". It's very difficult to stop it...

Released on Monday, March 29, 2004 at The Surgery, waiting room. in Brewood, England United Kingdom.

Released by proxy.