How Green Was My Valley (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)

It is a slow book to get into, and at first it seems to be a shallow excercise in nostalgia. But the undercurrents soon appear, of politics and family tensions, that will grow and evolve throughout the course of the book.

Yet though the idyllic landscape of Huw Morgan's childhood is perhaps doomed from the outset, he - looking back on this time as an old man - can both appreciate his days with an adult's hindsight, and also through the eyes of his younger self.

The latter aspect is what makes this book a classic. I have not read another novel which captures what it is like to be a child so well. Aspects of the young Huw's character - his occasional arrogance, his fascination with mundane things - make sense when we consider what we were like at his age. But what is really astounding is how the excitement, joy, innocence and love of childhood are recreated by Llewellyn - when he writes of the sound of Welsh voices echoing round the valleys, it is as vivid as one of your own cherished childhood memories. However, Llewellyn is not merely dabbling in nostalgia. He portrays Huw growing up, and the mixture of bitter disappointments and greater joys and responsibilities this brings.

Throughout the novel there is a strong sense of character, yet tempered by Huw's narration. The result of this is that, though some of the characters (Huw's brothers, for example) are seemingly not totally fleshed out, this is clearly done on purpose. It's hard to explain, but Llewellyn sticks to his first-person narrator to the extent of only showing characters how Huw saw them at the time, whilst letting in a little bit of hindsight. Characters' personalities are hinted at - take Dai Bando the fighter, for example, he always acts kindly to Huw, but later on when other aspects of his personality are unveiled (to make him more of a three dimensional character) we cannot say that this came completely out of the blue.

The best example of character is Huw's father. Comparing him with Atticus in confirmed-classic To Kill a Mockingbird: though, like Valley, Mockingbird is told by the narrator looking back on her youth, the young Scot is never as convincingly child-like as the young Huw is. However, whereas Atticus was a strangely infallible and unreal character, Gwilym Morgan is not. This is evident early on in the novel in his dealings with the miners - the young Huw still saw him as a brilliant person, but the old Huw can see in hindsight (as can we) that Gwilym was sometimes wrong in what he thought, and sometimes he saw this and sometimes he didn't. Yet we only care for him all the more because of this.

I apologise for the length of this review, as it is hard to describe how fantastic How Green Was My Valley is without simply repeating the word "beautiful" over and over again. The novel has its faults: it is slightly repetitive, and the slow pace and eye for detail is certainly not for everyone. Yet none of these things sufficiently explain why the book is not as widely known and read nowadays as it was in 1939.

In summary, How Green Was My Valley is a deeply poignant and emotional novel. It is not emotional because it tugs at your heart-strings with cheap melodrama. It is emotional because it is an allegory for the halycon days of all our youths, and the exchanges we make when we grow up.

(Imagine my joy when I discovered that I'm of part-Welsh descent, and my great-great-grandfather was also named Huw!)

I can honestly that this is probably one of the best books I have ever read.