Our Bookshelf
Browse our Bookshelves, selected annually by the Exchange as a window to recent Welsh literary works which we recommend for translation.
“Desire, class and Welsh nationalism prove a combustible combination in this brooding literary romance.”
The Observer
“A beautiful novel about class, first love and how places can define us.”
Good Housekeeping
“A cinematic page-turner.”
Buzz Magazine
“Through a dewy sheen of teen nostalgia, Reece deftly explores the weight of political events on individual lives. Her supple, visceral prose evokes north Wales in all its complexity, beautifully rendered in water, resin and sky.”
Jessica Andrews, author of Saltwater and Milk Teeth
“Francesca Reece is a devastatingly compelling new voice in literary fiction.”
Louise O'Neill, author of Asking For It and Idol
Glass Houses
Shortlisted for 2025 Wales Book of the Year: Fiction
Geth and Olwen live in different worlds. Olwen left North Wales for London to become a filmmaker and lives with her banker husband. Geth stayed in their rural hometown and works as a forester. They were in love once, but now they are strangers to each other.
That is, until Olwen returns, moving into the lakeside house that Geth looks after for absent English owners; the house he has come to think of as his own. Before they know it, they find themselves pulled back together – back into the past and what could have been – or still could be.
Taking us from the incendiary world of radical politics in Thatcher’s Britain to the housing crisis of the present day, Glass Houses is a story about love and friendship, about class and rural life, and about the disappointments of those who leave and those who stay.
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Tinder Press (2024)
978-1472272249
336pp.
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Tinder Press (2024)
Seren Adams, Lexington Literary Agency seren@lexingtonliterary.co.uk
Reviews
“Desire, class and Welsh nationalism prove a combustible combination in this brooding literary romance.”
Read more reviewsThe Observer