On the Black Hill

Sulla collina nera ha il respiro della grande saga familiare, ricondotta però al binomio dei due gemelli Jones, protagonisti del romanzo. Binomio perché i due fratelli sono un unicum, un’entità completa solo nella sinergia delle due componenti e inesistenti come unità separate. Stupisce la loro totale empatia che pure li porta al contrasto. Sarà Lewis, il più forte dei due a dover rinunciare ad una vita propria per amore del gemello incapace di amare e vivere se non entro i confini della cerchia familiare.
Ed è un cerchio che racchiude le loro vicende. Non già spaziale, poiché i luoghi del racconto sono ristretti a poche miglia ma temporale. Il respiro del racconto inizia e si esaurisce con la vita dei protagonisti, dalla fine show more dell’Ottocento agli anni ’80 del Novecento.
Lo sfondo della vicenda è un’immutabile campagna gallese, incorrotta dal tempo e dagli eventi, da ritmi di vita sempre uguali. I personaggi di contorno restano sullo sfondo, anch’essi generazioni delle stesse famiglie che incontriamo già all’inizio del romanzo.
Tutta la narrazione è pervasa da un forte senso di amarezza e nostalgia, ma soprattutto di sospensione temporale: come se ottant’anni di vita trascorressero e svanissero in un battito d’ali di farfalla.
Lo stile è sempre quello di Chatwin: fresco, mai prolisso, aneddotico. Non mi viene migliore immagine per descriverlo che quella di penellate fresche appena accennate, ma che nel complesso creano un grande affresco.. show less

In what could work as a series of short stories, Bruce Chatwin writes tenderly about the countryside on the Welsh border. We meet the twins when they are 80, sleeping side by side in their parents old bed but then go back to when their own parents, Amos and Mary meet and follow time in a linear fashion. Amos and Mary are an unlikely couple. He is a land-less farm hand and she is gentle and well-read and travelled. And yet, they secure a tenancy and eventually buy the farm that sits on the border between Wales and England, looking over the two nations. The farm is the focus of all the action, such as it is. This is not a novel with a complex plot, this is life in rural Britain through the decades through the 20th century and a period of show more huge change. The twins are identical but have different characteristics and it is Benjamin who seems to need Lewis. After the death of their parents they divide the farm work between them. Lewis drives the tractor they eventually buy and Benjamin does the books and lambing. Around them are a collection of local characters. Most remarkable were the couple at The Rock, Old Tom (the Coffin) and Aggie Watson. This couple live in constant poverty and have no children of their own but bring up others. Eventually the only one left is Meg The Rock, who wears multiple green jumpers, each more holes than wool and she resembles moss and talks to the birds. Bruce Chatwin's descriptions are vivid of both people and the landscape and he builds a novel from segments, seen from the outside. It is actions that are described, rather than emotions and these remain muted. The chapter when the tenant farms are sold off by the estate to pay death duties was the most evocative to me. These individual farmers found common cause and worked in unison to ensure a fair price for the tenants, with the exception of one man who held a long-standing grudge and didn't play the game. It took Mary's tact and manners to resolve the situation. show less

This is a beautiful, quietly written book with an old soul. Set on a Welsh mountain side, it's a moving account of the bond between twin brothers who live at Black Hill farm throughout the entirety of their lives, and the often fraught relationships between family members and nearest neighbours.

I really enjoyed this gentle novel. Reminding me of a cross between Thomas Hardy's and Kent Haruf's writing, it was emotive and moving with well executed characters trying to make ends meet in the rural isolation of the Welsh mountains.

For anyone who's already read this and enjoyed it, I thoroughly recommend Horatio Clare's memoir Running for the Hills. It has a very similar setting on a Welsh mountain farm and real-life eccentric rural show more characters. I kept thinking of it as I read this book (to the extent that I wonder did it heavily influence Clare's own book).

4.5 stars - a wonderful read. Highly recommended. show less

A wonderful traditional novel about identical twin brothers in rural Wales. They are born at the beginning of the 20th century, and the story runs from the lives of their parents, through two World Wars, and into the 1970s or 1980s. The twins rarely leave their immediate rural area, but Chatwin has constructed a wide-ranging and affecting story of time, and frustration, and family love, which binds even as it supports, and tradition, and narrowness and even desperation. The book portrays a region's deep religiosity, but there is no sense of Providence. The land endures. People and animals pass away. Almost no one gets what he or she deserves. It is a sad book, but a lovely book. It is very different from Bruce Chatwin's better-known show more travel books, but it is equally masterful. show less

Sulla collina nera ha il respiro della grande saga familiare, ricondotta però al binomio dei due gemelli Jones, protagonisti del romanzo. Binomio perché i due fratelli sono un unicum, un’entità completa solo nella sinergia delle due componenti e inesistenti come unità separate. Stupisce la loro totale empatia che pure li porta al contrasto. Sarà Lewis, il più forte dei due a dover rinunciare ad una vita propria per amore del gemello incapace di amare e vivere se non entro i confini della cerchia familiare.
Ed è un cerchio che racchiude le loro vicende. Non già spaziale, poiché i luoghi del racconto sono ristretti a poche miglia ma temporale. Il respiro del racconto inizia e si esaurisce con la vita dei protagonisti, dalla fine show more dell’Ottocento agli anni ’80 del Novecento.
Lo sfondo della vicenda è un’immutabile campagna gallese, incorrotta dal tempo e dagli eventi, da ritmi di vita sempre uguali. I personaggi di contorno restano sullo sfondo, anch’essi generazioni delle stesse famiglie che incontriamo già all’inizio del romanzo.
Tutta la narrazione è pervasa da un forte senso di amarezza e nostalgia, ma soprattutto di sospensione temporale: come se ottant’anni di vita trascorressero e svanissero in un battito d’ali di farfalla.
Lo stile è sempre quello di Chatwin: fresco, mai prolisso, aneddotico. Non mi viene migliore immagine per descriverlo che quella di penellate fresche appena accennate, ma che nel complesso creano un grande affresco.. show less

I've always liked Bruce Chatwin, without necessarily loving any of his books. Now I've found one in "On the Black Hill" that I love without reservation - an epic without being of epic proportions, and a book that comes as close to being perfect as I can think of.

An emotionally intense, beautifully written novel that's lyrical and sad. Check out this verse from chapter X:

"They lay on their backs and gazed at the clouds that crossed the fretted patches of sky; at the zig-zagging dots which were flies; and, way above, the other black dots which were the swallows wheeling."

At times it's also very funny. A subtle and cheeky humour.

One thing that impressed me from a technical standpoint is the lack of dialogue. There is reported speech but never really whole conversations. Virtually the entire novel is in authorial voice. Chatwin may simply be playing to his strengths, but it impressed me that a novel so successful could be written without using one of the novelist's main tools.