I bought this - full price no less - in Laugharne ('Larne') on a pilgrimage to the town that Dylan loved, and the main inspiration for Under Milk Wood. This is a memoir by his wife Cailin and their life together in drink...

(11/08) Despite Caitlin's protestations about her writing ability, this is good, obviously her brittle self confidence was further damaged by association with the most celebrated poetic genius of his time. As the title suggests a lot of this book is about the drinking and excesses of the couple; him on a self-destruction course, his fate to be a penniless tragic figure dying at his peak, she seeming to become a drunk by default. We get a glimpse of her unusual childhood, seemingly happy with her sisters in a country idyll, although an absent father and a distant bohemian mother...so what created her troubled adulthood, the violence, the sexual hang-ups, the raving jealousy? We may never know. There is an afterword from her son, born late in life post-Dylan to her Italian second husband. Francesco acknowledges his mother's problems, but seems to have benefited from her healthy sober later years.

Taking along to today's Ipswich meet-up

Picked up at the meeting today.

I am surprised that BookGroupMan thinks Caitlin Thomas’ childhood appeared happy. In the ‘Introduction’ Thomas states, “my father, Francis Macnamara, did not believe in educating girls” [P xiii] So, right from the start, she was told she was second best to her elder brother. There was also the rivalry with her sisters, which is most clearly expressed when Thomas talks about them looking for birds and nests, saying, “Each of us strove to outdo the others in finding nests or birds” [P 44] Finally, given the way she notes that her brother John liked women who were, “very neat and tiny, perhaps because his three gallumphing sisters were too big for him” I suspect she also had concerns about the way she looked. All in all, I can see where her brittle self-confidence originated, and why she used alcohol as a way to overcome her devilish shyness.

This is a story of self-destruction, with all the self-depreciation of a person who truly believes she has no value in, and of herself. Her marriage to Dylan Thomas, and his rise to fame, only served to add to her sense of worthlessness and I was left surprised at her body’s ability to survive the punishment she doled out. This is a very readable but leaves as many questions unanswered as it answers.

Left on the usual bookshelf.