Y Bwthyn (The Cottage)

Y Bwthyn (The Cottage)

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In her haunting new novel, award-winning writer Caryl Lewis once again draws on her own first-hand experience as she turns her unflinching eye on an upland sheep-farming community in west Wales. Escaping from the difficulties of urban life, Owen arrives at an isolated, abandoned cottage, where he falls ill. Discovered and cared for by the owners, the elderly, recently widowed Enoch and his middle-aged bachelor son Isaac, he gradually recovers and begins to adapt to their ways. But his incursion into their lives begins to disturb the fragile balance in the relationships of his hosts and of the neighbouring farmers. As the seasons pass, each with its appropriate tasks requiring cooperation and collaboration, and as the newcomer becomes further embedded in his new surroundings, hidden tensions from the past begin to surface. In his search for his own identity Owen gradually discovers that winning Enoch’s approval entails Isaac’s dangerous enmity, and only by a hair’s breadth is disaster averted and mutual understanding eventually achieved.

Perfectly paced, structured by the rhythms of nature and the farming year, the novel depicts with compassion the realities of life in an agricultural, Welsh-speaking community forced to adapt to changing circumstances. Lyrical in style yet uncompromising in its acuity of vision, this is Caryl Lewis’s finest novel yet.

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'Caryl Lewis is at her best in this powerful novel.'

Manon Steffan Ros