New Welsh Review 135 (summer 2024)

New Welsh Review 135 (summer 2024)
Author: Satterday Shaw
Publisher: Parthian Books
Total Pages: 115
Release: 2024-06-01
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1913830276

Bringing together the best of Wales' review-essays, including a comparison of new editions of nature classics, 'Back to the Land' by Pippa Marland. The books under review, Thomas Firbank's I Bought a Mountain and Margiad Evans' Autobiography take contrasting blustering and humble approaches to stepping over the sub/urban doorstep into nature. A showcase of new nonfiction, previewing forthcoming titles from some of Wales' key English-language publishers, exploring books on anti-Welsh media vitriol covering the early Manic Street Preachers, and historical flooding and the riches of an Eton-owned Benedictine fishery on the Gwent Levels. In original fiction: a wonderful story about a teenage boy on the cusp of bodily and emotional change, 'Trout', by Satterday Shaw, and a second, finely crafted story about the effect of geographical dislocation on teenage identity emergence, 'Another Place' by Philippa Holloway, set on Crosby beach. Plus Editorial by Gwen Davies and a new opinion feature, Last Page, by Richard Lewis Davies, in which the writers note that magazines in Wales are undergoing a transition, during which readers and subscribers will need to step up to the plate if a commitment to expressing – without interference - our particular place and time, is to be maintained. EDITORIAL Half-in, half-out Gwen Davies NONFICTION Bears at the Fridge: From Goldcliff to Whitson Preview extract from This Stolen Land by Marsha O'Mahony The Kinnock Factor: The Manics and Anti-Welshness Edited abridged preview from International Velvet by Neil Collins FICTION Another Place Story by Philippa Holloway Trout Story by Satterday Shaw ESSAYS Dark Formula Timothy Laurence Marsh on why reckless travel writing matters Books for Alien Girls JL George's personal and practical reflections on the role neurodivergence can and should play when writing fiction REVIEW-ESSAYS Back to the Land Pippa Marland on two nature memoir classics, one of hubristic bluster, the other humbly receptive 'Queer Old Codgers' Claire Pickard on the portrayal of highly nuanced gay identities and history in recent nonfiction titles and a major short story anthology THE LAST PAGE Back to the Future Richard Lewis Davies on how a culture with ambition needs critics and readers

The Welsh Girl

The Welsh Girl
Author: Peter Ho Davies
Publisher: HMH
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2013-08-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0547524900

A WWII-era Welsh barmaid begins a secret relationship with a German POW in this “beautiful” novel by the author of A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself (Ann Patchett). Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Set in the stunning landscape of North Wales just after D-Day, this critically acclaimed debut novel traces the intersection of disparate lives in wartime. When a prisoner-of-war camp is established near her village, seventeen-year-old barmaid Esther Evans finds herself strangely drawn to the camp and its forlorn captives. She is exploring the camp boundary when an astonishing thing occurs: A young German corporal calls out to her from behind the fence. From that moment on, the two begin an unlikely—and perilous—romance. Meanwhile, a German-Jewish interrogator travels to Wales to investigate Britain’s most notorious Nazi prisoner, Rudolf Hess. In this richly drawn and thought-provoking “tour de force,” all will come to question the meaning of love, family, loyalty, and national identity (The New Yorker). “If you loved The English Patient, there’s probably a place in your heart for The Welsh Girl.” —USA Today “Davies’s characters are marvelously nuanced.” —Los Angeles Times “Beautifully conjures a place and its people, in an extraordinary time . . . A rare gem.” —Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs “This first novel by Davies, author of two highly praised short story collections, has been anticipated—and, with its wonderfully drawn characters, it has been worth the wait.” —Booklist, starred review

The Last of Her Kind

The Last of Her Kind
Author: Sigrid Nunez
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2006-12-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429944978

The paths of two women from different walks of life intersect amid counterculture of the 1960s in this haunting and provocative novel from the National Book Award-winning author of The Friend Named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Christian Science Monitor Sigrid Nunez's The Last of Her Kind introduces two women who meet as freshmen on the Columbia campus in 1968. Georgette George does not know what to make of her brilliant, idealistic roommate, Ann Drayton, and her obsessive disdain for the ruling class into which she was born. She is mortified by Ann's romanticization of the underprivileged class, which Georgette herself is hoping college will enable her to escape. After the violent fight that ends their friendship, Georgette wants only to forget Ann and to turn her attention to the troubled runaway kid sister who has reappeared after years on the road. Then, in 1976, Ann is convicted of murder. At first, Ann's fate appears to be the inevitable outcome of her belief in the moral imperative to "make justice" in a world where "there are no innocent white people." But, searching for answers to the riddle of this friend of her youth, Georgette finds more complicated and mysterious forces at work. The novel's narrator Georgette illuminates the terrifying life of this difficult, doomed woman, and in the process discovers how much their early encounter has determined her own path, and why, decades later, as she tells us, "I have never stopped thinking about her."

The Rivalry of Flowers

The Rivalry of Flowers
Author: Shani Rhys James
Publisher: Seren Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781781720615

A book of new paintings and works by Shani Rhys James, one of Britain’s leading and most distinctive artists, this collection reveals how her latest work has developed a lighter palette to deal with new subjects of flowers and colorful, patterned wallpaper backgrounds. These themes of domesticity are not anodyne however, but informed by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story about the plight of women in the home, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Rhys James’ paintings continue her exploration of the position of women in society, and in particular how women can be imprisoned by consumerism and the domestic environment. The more than 50 images in the book include photographs of a new development in Rhys James’s work: automata based on the motifs of past paintings. The paintings are accompanied by a foreword by the artist and critic William Packer, a perceptive interview of Rhys James by Francesca Rhydderch, in which the artist discusses her background and her interest in the position of women, and an essay by Edward Lucie-Smith that explores her paintings in an art history context.

Wales in England, 1914-1945

Wales in England, 1914-1945
Author: Wendy Ugolini
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2024-05-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198863276

The first cultural history of English Welsh duality - an identification with two constituent nations at once - that explores how 'Welshness' was imagined, performed, and mobilised in England during and between the two world wars.

Brando's Bride

Brando's Bride
Author: Sarah Broughton
Publisher: Parthian Books
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2019-08-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1912681595

The incredibly true story of Anna Kashfi and her marriage to Hollywood's greatest star, written by film and television producer Sarah Broughton. In October 1957 Marlon Brando married a young studio actress called Anna Kashfi. He was thirty-three and at the pinnacle of his beautiful fame having recently won an Oscar for On the Waterfront. The wedding was front-page news around the world. His new bride was twenty-three, claimed to be an Indian princess and was pregnant. The day after the wedding a factory worker living in Wales, William O'Callaghan, revealed that Brando's bride was in fact his daughter, Joan O'Callaghan and had been a butcher's assistant from Cardiff. This book sets out to discover who was telling the truth and who was lying – and, perhaps more importantly, why?

I Let You Go

I Let You Go
Author: Clare Mackintosh
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2017-11-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0451490525

On a rainy afternoon, a mother's life is shattered as her son slips from her grip and runs into the street.

Feed

Feed
Author: M. T. Anderson
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2010-05-11
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0763651559

Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains. Winner of the LA Times Book Prize. For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon - a chance to party during spring break and play around with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who knows something about what it’s like to live without the feed-and about resisting its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., M. T. Anderson has created a brave new world - and a hilarious new lingo - sure to appeal to anyone who appreciates smart satire, futuristic fiction laced with humor, or any story featuring skin lesions as a fashion statement.

Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy

Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy
Author: Maggie Walter
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2020-10-29
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000214281

This book examines how Indigenous Peoples around the world are demanding greater data sovereignty, and challenging the ways in which governments have historically used Indigenous data to develop policies and programs. In the digital age, governments are increasingly dependent on data and data analytics to inform their policies and decision-making. However, Indigenous Peoples have often been the unwilling targets of policy interventions and have had little say over the collection, use and application of data about them, their lands and cultures. At the heart of Indigenous Peoples’ demands for change are the enduring aspirations of self-determination over their institutions, resources, knowledge and information systems. With contributors from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, North and South America and Europe, this book offers a rich account of the potential for Indigenous data sovereignty to support human flourishing and to protect against the ever-growing threats of data-related risks and harms. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429273957, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Red, White & Royal Blue

Red, White & Royal Blue
Author: Casey McQuiston
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2019-05-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250316782

* Instant NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY bestseller * * GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD WINNER for BEST DEBUT and BEST ROMANCE of 2019 * * BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR* for VOGUE, NPR, VANITY FAIR, and more! * What happens when America's First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales? When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius—his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse. Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn't always diplomatic. "I took this with me wherever I went and stole every second I had to read! Absorbing, hilarious, tender, sexy—this book had everything I crave. I’m jealous of all the readers out there who still get to experience Red, White & Royal Blue for the first time!" - Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners "Red, White & Royal Blue is outrageously fun. It is romantic, sexy, witty, and thrilling. I loved every second." - Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six