I Am Reading Richard Llewellyns Book - How Green Was My Valley.

Reading can sometimes be like eating blackberry pie, you can taste the writing and that taste lingers for a long time. Richard Llewellyns writing is a bit like eating blackberry pie ...... but Llewellyn writes far better about taste than I do:

“I wonder is happiness only an essence of good living, that you shall taste only once or twice while you live, and then go on living with the taste in your mouth, and wishing you had the fullness of it solid between your teeth, like a good meal that you have tasted and cherished and look back in your mind to eat again.”

I have no doubt that the pointy heads will wring their hands and muse through their musing beards and state that this book is some sort of literary opium ( aka, pie in the sky bye and bye!) for the chattering classes but I have found Richard Llewellyns writing endearingly poetic, lyrical, seductive and yes, nostalgic and sentimental. To read this book is to smile continually for the duration of each reading. To read this is to experience a roller coaster of emotion as the tale weaves its way among the family dynamics of Huw Morgans family and their life in a Welsh coal mining valley. I unashamedly love this writing.

" Growing up in a mining community in rural South Wales, Huw Morgan is taught many harsh lessons - at the kitchen table, at Chapel and around the pit-head. Looking back on the hardships of his early life, where difficult days are faced with courage but the valleys swell with the beautiful sound of Welsh voices, it becomes clear that there is nowhere so green as the landscape of his own memory."

It is very difficult to choose an excerpt of Llewellyns writing as an example as every single page has wonderful lyrical passages, but as I am feeling hungry at the moment, I will share this exquisite gastronomical example, one of many wonderful examples as I read my way through this roller coaster of feelings book.

"O, blackberry tart, with berries as big as your thumb, purple and black, and thick with juice, and a crust to endear them that will go to cream in your mouth, and both passing down with such a taste that will make you close your eyes and wish you might live for ever in the wideness of that rich moment".

.... and that's just the food!  LOL

If you would like to read other quotes from Richard Llewellyns book then click the link below;

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2329482-how-green-was-my-valley