Read For Free How Green Was My Valley Fashioned By Richard Llewellyn Formatted As Digital Format
the finest book I have ever read, Llewellyn's novel of a young boy growing up in Welsh coal mining country at the turn of theth Century is so realistic it was believed for years to be autobiographical, a myth Llewellyn himself did not discourage.
The
prose is so lyrical I found myself reading it aloud to my dogs, who are used to my declamations, often in dialect, Fortunately, I do not do Welsh, so they only had to hear me speak Educated North American,
If you have not read this treasure, do so with all haste, Lovely writing in this story of a Welsh family in a coalmining village I think in the Rhondda valley area altough the author didn't specify from aboutto,
While ostensibly about the Morgan family, this novel is documenting the end of an era, I had seen the film but years ago and I was struck when reading this by the similarities to the more recent film "Brassed Off" about the colliery closings in northern England Yorkshire during Margaret Thatcher's time.
Different times and places but the same loss of a way of life amp the same sense of sadness,
Some of Llewellyn's descriptions caught my breath such as this one of Angharad when fighting withyearold Huw:
" 'I hate you,' she said, and wrapped her cloak round her so that she was a black pillar, with a white face and her eyes with glitter and shine to make you afraid.
"
Even though I knew the ending, I found myself weeping, It wasn't just And the loss of the family home which is being buried by the slag heaps as the reader knows from the very first page just makes it all more poignant.
I'll just go ahead and start by saying this review is a hard one for me to write, My emotions become tied up in all of the books I have loved over the years, and it matters very little what genre they are or what the writing style is or when they were written and by whom.
Those books that I really love, I tend to love with wild abandon and, once given, that devotion is rarely retracted, My friend Janicu recently commented that I am "the queen of rereading, " And this is true. I love nothing better than a cozy sit down with an old friend, and I don't hesitate to put off the shiny new tome I've got in my hand if the battered old one is the one that's calling my name.
But there is one book that I can't let myself reread too often, In fact, I've only read it twice in my life, I joke but, of course, I'm not really joking at all that I can only read it once every decade, because the contents are too beautiful and too painful for everyday wear.
That book is HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY by sitelinkRichard Llewellyn, It sat in my house the entire time I was growing up, and I vaguely knew that it was a favorite of my mother's because of her Welsh ancestry, It was the title that drew me to it, What a wonderful title. I would go over and stroke the spine, but I never pulled it out, I think because I was worried it might not live up to its beautiful title, Finally, one summer I got the courage up to give it a shot, I've never been the same,
I am going to pack my two shirts with my other socks and my best suit in the little blue cloth my mother used to tie round her hair when she did the house, and I am going from the Valley.
Those are the the first words the reader encounters in this impressive volume, And they're the ones that made me certain this book and I would have a relationship, Growing up in a small coal mining town in South Wales, the youngest of a raft of five brothers and three sisters, Huw Morgan believed life would always be the same.
From helping his mother cook her bottomless, delicious meals in the family kitchen, to taking his weekly penny down to the taffy pullers for a length of homemade taffy, to watching his largerthanlife father and stout older brothers make the daily trek down the hill and home from the mines, Huw's life is filled to the brim with the sights and sounds and people of home.
In love with his oldest brother's wife from a very young age, and well aware of his lowly status within the family hierarchy, Huw knows what is his and what is not.
But his is a heart that knows how to love and he watches closely over the members of his family as they encounter the myriad trials and heartaches of life and as he himself is put through the painful process of growing up and becoming a man.
Along the way, almost everything about his humble life is altered, through strikes, schooling, marriage, betrayal, passion, death, and even boxing, Through it all, Huw struggles to reconcile the life that he knew with the life that is and to remember the good and the beautiful along with the bad and the ugly.
Written in, HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY is a tribute to the Welsh people and culture, Prior to reading this book, I don't think I'd ever felt as immersed in a version of our own world as I did in this one, Many a fantasy novel captured my imagination, but a work of historical fiction set only a few decades in the past That was a first, Llewellyn's storytelling is second to none, To this day I'm in awe of the compassion and loving attention to detail that went into the telling, A very favorite passage from so many it's impossible to count:
Bronwen came over plenty of Saturdays after that, but I was always shy of her, I think I must have fallen in love with Bronwen even then and I must have been in love with her all my life since, It is silly to think a child could fall in love, If you think about it like that, mind, But I am the child that was, and nobody knows how I feel, except only me, And I think I fell in love with Bronwen that Saturday on the hill,
I fell in love with Bronwen and Huw that day on the hill as well, And I have been in love with them both ever since, That simple, measured, and certain way Huw has of narrating his story sort of swallowed me from page one, Told in alternating passages between the present and the past, the man and the boy, the narrative incorporates the reader in such a way that it becomes almost immediately painful to contemplate your inevitable extraction from it all at the end.
This is one of those ones where you dread the turning of the final pages, And, if you're me, you're having trouble seeing them because the tears are welling up so quickly and so close together, Yes, an overwhelming sense of nostalgia and loss pervades allpages, but somehow it stops well short of being trite or cloying, So much of it is the beautiful, beautiful language, I would love this book for the language alone, if for nothing and no one else, It is unmatched. It haunts me, tripping after me out of nowhere sometimes, The singsong sentences, the inverted wording, and the lovely names come back to me over and over again, and I'm once again in the Valley with Huw and Bronwen, Ianto and Angharad, Gwilym and Dai Bando.
I read this aloud with my husband thenboyfriend and I really can't overstate how beautiful it is read aloud, And shared with someone else who appreciates the endless nuance and the inviting whisper of a language used to its fullest capacity, wrapped in and around characters who wring you out and own a piece of your soul by the time it is through.
Truly the most lyrical and beautiful book I have ever read, I'll be all set to pick it up again in another ten years or so, کتاب دره من چه سبز بود نوشته آقای لولین لوید حکایت روستاییانی ساده دل و مهربان هست که در روستایی درون دره ای سبز زندگی می کنند در نزدیکی معدن زغال سنگ. همگی آنان در این معدن مشغول به کار هستند. داستان از زبان هو پسر کوچک خانواده روایت می شود.
زندگی کارگران ساده ای که تمام عمر خود را در معدن به سر می برند و از طرف صاحب معدن به شدت استثمار می شوند حکایت انبوه کارگران عصر ویکتوریا که دستمزد آنان تنها کفاف نان آنها را می دهد آنها هیچ حقوقی ندارند و از جانب هیچ سازمانی هم حمایت نمی شوند.
هو با بیانی شاعرانه به توصیف حوادث دوران کودکی و زندگی در دره ای زیبا در ولز پرداخته زندگی خانواده کم توقع خود را توصیف کرده مبارزات اتحادیه در برابر صاحب معدن اعتصاب ها گرسنگی ها معدن مخوف که زندگی کارگران را گروگان گرفته است با زیاد شدن کارگران و ارزان شدن قیمت زغال اخراج کارگران اوج گرفته و خانواده هو از هم می پاشد معدن به مانند یک هیولا زندگی کارگران را نابود کرده و دره زیبا همیشه سبز را هم ویران.
با افزایش بی کاری و فقر کارگران مانند برادران هو به نقاط مختلف جهان از آمریکا تا نیوزلند مهاجرت می کنند و نشانه ای از زندگی در آن دره نمی ماند هو که اکنون میانسال شده با حسرت از دره سبز و خاطرات آن می گوید.
اما متاسفانه تمام زیبایی های این کتاب و رمان عظیم در ترجمه بسیار مضحک آن رنگ باخته است. مترجم کتاب آقای اسدالله جعفرزاده با تلاش بسیار کوشیده است تا تمامی زیبایی های کتاب را از بین ببرد او در راه رسیدن به این هدف از عبارات و اصطلاحات فارسی استفاده کرده و این عبارات را در دهان شخصیت های اوایل قرن بیستم ولز از حمله هو بیچاره و خانواده نگون بختش گذاشته.
جملات گنگ و بدون معنی و مفهوم ظرافتهای داستان را از بین برده و برای مثال خواننده متوجه نمی شود که عشق پاک هو به برون ون به کجا رسید.
کتاب دره من چه سبز بود از آنجا که بیانگر نگاه کارگران ساده در زمانه صنعتی شدن و تلاش آنان برای حفظ کار و زندگی آنان می باشد را هم ردیف خوشه های خشم به حساب میاورند. اما ترجمه ضعیف کتاب را به اثری متوسط تبدیل کرده است. .