Similarly, Jane Fraser maps out the edge of north Gower in this supremely confident debut collection with its "farmhouses limewashed in the vernacular style," its persistent grey rains and the dominant southwesterly winds which bonsai the hedgerow trees and equally shape the stubborn characters who work the land hereabouts. So many stories are shored up by fine, nuanced landscape-writing such as "Just in Case" which presents the reader with the burrows "brushed with the burnished bronze of sunrise and the conical dunes, a lunar landscape, sharply defined and stark with shadow that will lift with the rising sun." Lovely stuff, and there's lots of it but always balanced by shadow, the darkness seeping in like damp.
Jon Gower Nation Cymru
Jon Gower Nation Cymru