Inpress Newsletter
Synopsis
The village of Tanygraig on the Welsh-English border is the setting for this passionate novel of love and its consequences. Beti, the beautiful and wilful daughter of a pub landlord, is pursued by two men: Llew, her aggressive, red-haired cousin, and Evan, the dreamy miller and would-be poet. She has to make a choice but it’s not her future alone that depends on her decision. She and Tanygraig are positioned precariously on borders of class, nation, language, and changing times. In this enduring novel by Geraint Goodwin, first published in 1936, Wales is associated with tradition and stability, England connotes modernity and movement. Beti is conscious of living at a temporal border: ‘The old way of things was ending; she had come at the end of one age and the beginning of another. Wales would be the last to go – but it was going…’ Offers an intimate portrayal of sexual attraction – the time of youthful ‘heyday in the blood’. “It has filled me with a sense of seeing great talent trying its first flight, which I have not experienced since reading D.H Lawrence’s The White Peacock” — Howard Spring
The story of The Heyday in the Blood centres on a small Welsh village that is on the verge of change; its old routines being eroded through progress and personal circumstances. Strangers appear with increasing regularity. The language of the book is beautifully lyrical and the characters use of Welsh-accented English adds to the song-like feel of the dialogue. This is an idyll fast fading, set in a landscape where the seasons rotate with beautiful force. Within this landscape, the characters are torn by circumstance and emotion. The central character Beti’s two suitors are the opposite of each other in temperament and fortune, but both have parts of Beti’s own soul and character: the wilful Llew, who has everything but Beti and the tubercular, bankrupt Evan who loses everything but her. The author wants to show his characters as part of and products of, their surroundings. Llew’s attraction to Beti is like that of her attachment to the landscape around her: so familiar that it repels her at the same time. Her love for Evan forces her to leave her familiar surroundings and face the unknown, just as the village has to do. This is a beautifully written book and I would happily recommend it.
Melissa Collin
Have you read The Heyday in the Blood by Geraint Goodwin? - Add your own review
