The Coward's Tale

 

    Reading an interview with Vanessa Gebbie, author of The Coward's Tale, one sentence in particular caught my eye. Talking about her novel and the year she spent polishing it, Vanessa says, "It took a long time until I was happy with each sentence". Two things strike me: if only more authors were as assiduous, as meticulous as Vanessa is, and how that care and attention to every word shows in the finished book!

    I wrote a little about the book (and its musical map) in this post and I mentioned that it was a beautifully crafted piece, and it is that, both in terms of the wider arc of the story and of every underlying detail. There's a debt to Dylan Thomas here in the language and the construction, but with a nod to that literary heritage, every line is Vanessa's own; here are a couple to show you what I mean:

"... perfectly matched bedside tables for the Deputy Manager of the Savings Bank and his wife, but their bedroom floor is uneven so both glasses for the false teeth go on one table, where they can smile at each other until morning."

At the bank, "Matty Harris ... will have straightened and straightened his papers that need no straightening at all. He'll have opened and closed the drawers of his desk to hear the small sounds of their importance."

    There is nothing pedestrian about this novel, no phrase that like the feathers carved by the woodwork teacher Icarus Evans has not been worked at and honed until it shines, but that masterly fashioning is matched by an intricate pattern of individual story lines, each one a picture of a character, each one a step further in relating past events and explaining present circumstances. Central to this is the young boy, Laddy Merridew, who has been sent to live with his grandmother in this small Welsh mining community and who finds a friend in Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, the town beggar and keeper of its stories. As Ianto tells of this person and that one, their tics and foibles, the set of their habits and the deep grooves of their ways, so it seems that everything leads back to a September day many years earlier when an explosion at the Kindly Light pit took many of the town's men.

    In a book based on a central tragic event, there is great humour and humanity, honesty and poignancy - the pitch is just right, and all the while the story's cadences rise and fall with a lilt and a rhythm that make it irresistible. Vanessa's year of polishing has truly paid off; this is an outstanding piece.

 

(The jacket design is by Holly Macdonald).

Comments

[Mystica]

As always you conjure gorgeous books!

[Cornflower]

Glad you think so, Mystica!

[Delyn]

I read this book at Christmas and absolutely loved it.
Very reminiscent of Dylan Thomas.

[Cornflower]

It's great, isn't it?