How Green Was My Valley

There is lovely to read. Richard Llewellyn crafts a lyrical, yearning memoir (one assumes it must be rooted in his experience) of growing up in the Welsh mining valleys around the end of the19th century. The telling can be nostalgic but always seem authentic: the characters in his large family; the strikes and disputes with the mine owners; emigration to the New World as an outlet; solidarity and factionalism in chapelgoing and preaching; the strength and support, the camaraderie in the Valleys community, but also often its narrow-minded rebukes and exclusion; presentiments, sadly, of the Aberfan disaster (slag heaps towering above the village houses). Just as memorable are Llewellyn’s deep, sensual, enveloping descriptions of the show more touch and feel of things - of one’s pride and solemnity at putting on the first pair of long “trews”, of the vegetables “mixing in warm comfort together” to make a “potch”, of the feel of a kiss, and of why it’s the mouth we use for kissing, not the nose or eyes (still lyrically described, despite the absurdity). show less

“There is no fence or hedge round Time that has gone.
You can go back and have what you like if you remember it well enough.”

It's been a long time since I've cried that aching cry for fictional characters as I just did for the Morgans and their green Welsh valley.

The book is about change, often bitter changes, changes that cannot be prevented, and changes that could be prevented but each shortsighted generation has other things on their minds. The book is about natural changes, the natural change of a boy as he grows into a man, changes when we find love and change when love is lost, and the most unreconcilable change of all: when people we know as well as we know ourselves will die.

Reading it, I was keenly aware of other changes show more too, the many I've seen in my one lifetime. I recognized a lot of old ideas and old norms that were prevalent in this 1939 book, many of those those ideas and norms were there in my grandparents in 1969. Some for better, some for worse. I thought of the many changes now, decades later. Some are for the better, some that are disheartening to the spirit, and so many that remain desperately unrealized but needed.

The beauty and ache of the book is in the sensitivity of Llewellyn's writing. The story is timeless, in spite of the many changes it chronicles, because families and love, songs and good food, strivings to be good and to be just, and growing up and growing old, all are timeless.

There is a lovely book, it is, little one. show less

This melancholic elegy for departed loved ones and the vanished way of life of a Welsh coal mining town is one of the most beautiful books ever written. The narrator, Huw Morgan, tells the story of the lives and loves of his extended family and their townfolk as their closeknit community disintegrates under the pressures of modern life and the decreasing profitability of the mine--from brothers who have to move to America to make a living or others who are killed in the coal pits, to the widowed sister-in-law who Huw loves for years but never tells, to Mr. Gruffudd the local minister who helps Huw through childhood paralysis & becomes his tutor, to Dai Bando who teaches him to box and most of all to the beloved parents who suffer long show more but love greatly. The language itself is lyrical and haunting, the story ineffably sad. But always, Huw reminds us that these remarkable people live on in him.

This is the second time I have read this book. The first time I don't think I fully appreciated it as I was 16 years old and was being "forced" to read it for a literature class. I am so glad I gave it another look after I had matured. It is indeed a true classic that is timeless. show less

How Green Was My Valley immerses us in the middle of life in a coalmining village of Wales. It does so very effectively by having the narrator reflect back on his life, as he is now leaving his beloved village. This is truly a classic, the writing is stunning in its beauty and lyrical quality.

We are introduced to the young Huw Morgan and his loving, close-knit family. Our emotions are in for some heart wrenching experiences quickly. Huw's father and brothers work in the mines, as do almost all of the men in the village. His brothers are starting to stir up unrest by speaking out for Unions. When Huw guides his mother to the location of one of their meetings at her request, they end up getting lost in a blizzard on the way home. The show more mother falls in the stream and Hugh manages to get under her saving her life, but nearly killing himself in the process, and badly breaking his leg. He is bedridden for several years. It is the local pastor who eventually gets him back up on his feet and slowly able to walk again. They develop a lifelong deep bond of friendship.

The depiction of family, home life, and life in the village is stunning in its warmth and detail. From the food to the clothing to the furniture and everything else you can think of, it is all to be found in this story. The descriptions of food and its preparation will have your mouth watering. I absolutely loved the quaint pattern of speech the villagers used.

Huw's older siblings are starting to marry and dramas of love and broken hearts, even to the point of madness, unfold for us now.

Always, we are aware that tragedy and hard times loom on the horizon for Huw, his family and the village. The coalmining situation is untenable and the slag heaps grow bigger by the day. It's inevitable that one day they will overrun the village, though that's a distant future no one is willing to think about.

I did not like the violence, in the form of fighting and boxing, that was a big part of Welsh men's lives as depicted in this book. I especially didn't like that Huw, otherwise a very intelligent, sensitive, warm and loving boy participated in, and was even instructed in, violent fighting; in fact severely injuring several men throughout the story. The rampant prejudice and injustice perpatrated on the Welsh by the English was also disheartening, as was the villagers' own hypocrisy and religious zealotry which led to outrages of abuse and violence against those whom they condemned on moral grounds.

It is nothing short of miraculous how the writing encompasses all of this, and all of these people's lives and dramas, in this book; how deftly it is crafted. And we always know we must prepare ourselves for the ending. While you won't know exactly how it will unfold; darkness, sadness and tragedy are foreshadowed from the very beginning of the book. This is one of those classic stories that you will never forget. show less

A beautiful coming of age story in an early 20th century Welsh coal mining village. The story has all the hallmarks of a classic coming of age tale but it’s not the plot that makes this such a classic, it’s Llewelyn’s rich almost lyrical prose. Llewelyn pens more brilliant lines in one chapter than most authors do in their whole career. I really wish I had kept a notebook with me while reading to capture them. He has a talent for capturing indescribable innermost feelings and truths. Nostalgia leaps off the page and reminds the reader that the beauty of yesteryear is no less beautiful for being gone. Should’ve been called How good was my book.

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The book is much much better than the film. The characterisation of the Morgan siblings is much better; the politics makes a lot more sense; the change in the economics of mining over the decades of the story is well conveyed; the spoil tip, ever increasing in size, hangs over the village as an ominous threat (this in a book written thirty years before Aberfan); eveyone actually sounds Welsh. It is an effective portrayal of the violent, oppressive society where an unmarried mother is outcast while the father of her child gets sympathy (and even attending a theatrical performance can lead to disgrace). In one particularly chilling chapter, a young girl is murdered and the killer is quickly show more identified and lynched by the villagers. Llewellyn built a myth about himself from the book that may not have been entirely true, but considered as a Bildungsroman conveying a fictional time and place, I think it is a great book. show less

Ah, my little one, such a good book it is.

If a sense of place is uppermost in your reading needs, this book delivers. The valleys of Wales come alive through this story of a family who make their living in the coal mines; the breath-taking beauty, then the heart-breaking change as mining scars their landscape.

In and out of the sunlight, under the shadow of the trees, into their coolnesses, where leaf mould was soft with richness and held a whispering of the smells of a hundred years of green that had grown and gone, through the lanes of wild rose that were red with blown flower, up past the flowering berry bushes, through the pasture that was high to the knees, and clinging, and that hissed at us with every step, up beyond the mossy show more rocks where the little firs made curtseys, and up again, to the briars, and the oaks, and the elms, where there was peace, and the sound of grasshoppers striking their flints with impatience, and birds playing hide and seek, and the sun blinding hot upon us, and the sky, plain bright blue.

This is the story of a large, close, family living in the time of Queen Victoria; their relationships, growing up, education, illnesses and deaths, home life and livelihood, … and song - all of it rich in detail. Huw Morgan prepares to leave his home of 50 years, all relatives having passed on, and the house overtaken by slag. With that ugly backdrop, the beauty of his memories of the valley of his youth fuel the story.

5 stars for character, setting, story, and writing all. show less