How Green Was My Valley
I have a short attention span and, thus, have a hard time reading books by people like, say, Steinbeck or Hardy, where the scenery becomes a character...meaning there are endless passages describing meadows and livestock. However, I loved this book, and, it could be argued, that it has some of that atmospheric quality. I once gave a presentation to a group of women about books I recommend for book groups, and when I mentioned this one, one of the old women - let me say this again, she was OLD
This will be a review that I will, no doubt, edit and add to a lot.This is easily my most favorite and special book. It's something so beautiful that my heart aches to dwell on it. It aches because I long to be apart of something so perfect and wish for such beauty in everything I experience. I feel I belong in that small Welsh mining town, that I should be spending all of my time supporting my family and town, singing with friends, learning voraciously, worshiping God intelligently and
This is a very hard book to rate. I'm going with three and a half stars with caveats for some readers. Parts of it were five star brilliant. The rhythm and pattern of Welsh speech, conversation and story telling is rendered into English with a deft and often humorous touch. The descriptions of Wales and the countryside were exquisite and the sense of place and time so intense and immediate that I was often completely transported. The best parts are in the first half of the book as a man looks
I'm afraid I was just glad to finally be done with How Green Was My Valley. It's one of the most popular of the Welsh books I've read -- the one whose popularity has been most enduring, anyway -- and it's hard to understand why, when comparing the cloyingly nostalgic and sentimental story here to the vivacious and real work of Jack Jones and even Caradoc Evans. I guess that's it, though: it's nostalgic and sentimental and it lets the reader feel all weepy about industrialised Wales, without
3.5 stars - SpoilersA rather lovely and quaint coming of age story. It did take a while to get into and was quite slow and boring towards the end, but other than that it was a great read. -How Green Was My Valley seemed like less of a story and more like a pleasant stroll through the early years of someone's life. More specifically Huw Morgan's life, with him reminiscing about his childhood and the valley that was his home. There was no real solid plot, just Huw looking back at his family, and
What can I say? This novel was right up my alley.It revolves around a family and their lives in all their complexity and their amazing simplicity, set in a Welsh coal mining village (which was a unusual setting for me). It was wonderfully written, at once intimate, profound and simple. I loved that it detailed a way of life, harsh, but simple in a way, that is now lost for the most part.The story is narrated by Huw Morgan, and he has a unique, candid, wise and totally human voice. The parents
Richard Llewellyn
Paperback | Pages: 448 pages Rating: 4.18 | 14161 Users | 1323 Reviews
Identify Epithetical Books How Green Was My Valley
Title | : | How Green Was My Valley |
Author | : | Richard Llewellyn |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | First Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 448 pages |
Published | : | June 28th 2001 by Penguin Classics (first published 1939) |
Categories | : | Classics. Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Literature. European Literature. British Literature. Novels |
Interpretation Conducive To Books How Green Was My Valley
A poignant coming-of-age novel set in a Welsh mining town, Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley is a paean to a more innocent age, published in Penguin Modern Classics Growing up in a mining community in rural South Wales, Huw Morgan is taught many harsh lessons - at the kitchen table, at Chapel and around the pit-head. Looking back on the hardships of his early life, where difficult days are faced with courage but the valleys swell with the sound of Welsh voices, it becomes clear that there is nowhere so green as the landscape of his own memory. An immediate bestseller on publication in 1939, How Green Was My Valley quickly became one of the best-loved novels of the twentieth century. Poetic and nostalgic, it is an elegy to a lost world. Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd (1906-1983), better known by his pen name Richard Llewellyn, claimed to have been born in St David's, Pembrokeshire, Wales; after his death he was discovered to have been born of Welsh parents in Hendon, Middlesex. His famous first novel How Green Was My Valley (1939) was begun in St David's from a draft he had written in India, and was later adapted into an Oscar-winning film by director John Ford. None But the Lonely Heart, his second novel, was published in 1943, and subsequently made into a film starring Cary Grant and Ethel Barrymore. As well as novels including Green, Green My Valley Now (1975) and I Stand on a Quiet Shore (1982), Llewellyn wrote two highly successful plays, Poison Pen and Noose If you enjoyed How Green Was My Valley, you might like Barry Hines' A Kestrel for a Knave, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Vivid, eloquent, poetical, glowing with an inner flame of emotion' The Times Literary SupplementBe Specific About Books As How Green Was My Valley
Original Title: | How Green Was My Valley |
ISBN: | 0141185856 (ISBN13: 9780141185859) |
Edition Language: | English |
Characters: | Huw Morgan |
Setting: | Wales |
Literary Awards: | National Book Award for Fiction (1940) |
Rating Epithetical Books How Green Was My Valley
Ratings: 4.18 From 14161 Users | 1323 ReviewsAssessment Epithetical Books How Green Was My Valley
Lovely writing in this story of a Welsh family in a coal-mining village (I think in the Rhondda valley area altough the author didn't specify) from about 1890 to 1910.While ostensibly about the Morgan family, this novel is documenting the end of an era. I had seen the film but years ago and I was struck when reading this by the similarities to the more recent film "Brassed Off" about the colliery closings in northern England (Yorkshire?) during Margaret Thatcher's time. Different times andI have a short attention span and, thus, have a hard time reading books by people like, say, Steinbeck or Hardy, where the scenery becomes a character...meaning there are endless passages describing meadows and livestock. However, I loved this book, and, it could be argued, that it has some of that atmospheric quality. I once gave a presentation to a group of women about books I recommend for book groups, and when I mentioned this one, one of the old women - let me say this again, she was OLD
This will be a review that I will, no doubt, edit and add to a lot.This is easily my most favorite and special book. It's something so beautiful that my heart aches to dwell on it. It aches because I long to be apart of something so perfect and wish for such beauty in everything I experience. I feel I belong in that small Welsh mining town, that I should be spending all of my time supporting my family and town, singing with friends, learning voraciously, worshiping God intelligently and
This is a very hard book to rate. I'm going with three and a half stars with caveats for some readers. Parts of it were five star brilliant. The rhythm and pattern of Welsh speech, conversation and story telling is rendered into English with a deft and often humorous touch. The descriptions of Wales and the countryside were exquisite and the sense of place and time so intense and immediate that I was often completely transported. The best parts are in the first half of the book as a man looks
I'm afraid I was just glad to finally be done with How Green Was My Valley. It's one of the most popular of the Welsh books I've read -- the one whose popularity has been most enduring, anyway -- and it's hard to understand why, when comparing the cloyingly nostalgic and sentimental story here to the vivacious and real work of Jack Jones and even Caradoc Evans. I guess that's it, though: it's nostalgic and sentimental and it lets the reader feel all weepy about industrialised Wales, without
3.5 stars - SpoilersA rather lovely and quaint coming of age story. It did take a while to get into and was quite slow and boring towards the end, but other than that it was a great read. -How Green Was My Valley seemed like less of a story and more like a pleasant stroll through the early years of someone's life. More specifically Huw Morgan's life, with him reminiscing about his childhood and the valley that was his home. There was no real solid plot, just Huw looking back at his family, and
What can I say? This novel was right up my alley.It revolves around a family and their lives in all their complexity and their amazing simplicity, set in a Welsh coal mining village (which was a unusual setting for me). It was wonderfully written, at once intimate, profound and simple. I loved that it detailed a way of life, harsh, but simple in a way, that is now lost for the most part.The story is narrated by Huw Morgan, and he has a unique, candid, wise and totally human voice. The parents
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