How Green Was My Valley in Never too Late to Read Classics

Jun 25, 2014 Dea rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

What a gem. This is one of the most special pieces of writing I have ever come across... a lyrical, tender, exquisite masterpiece, and a beautiful elegy to a simpler world and a way of life that has been forever lost. This book is a rare treasure I will continue to come back to over the course of my life.

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Feb 08, 2019 Manybooks rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: book-reviews, history, favourites-read, families, mining

Although as an older and more critical reader I do somewhat understand those reviewers who have found Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley perhaps not quite nitty gritty and harshly descriptive enough with regard to showing and presenting what life used to be like in the mining towns of Wales, personally, I still have to admit that rereading How Green Was My Valley for the first time since I totally devoured this novel when we read it for school in 1982 has been in every way as much of a Although as an older and more critical reader I do somewhat understand those reviewers who have found Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley perhaps not quite nitty gritty and harshly descriptive enough with regard to showing and presenting what life used to be like in the mining towns of Wales, personally, I still have to admit that rereading How Green Was My Valley for the first time since I totally devoured this novel when we read it for school in 1982 has been in every way as much of a pleasure now as it had been then. For while Richard Llewellyn might have penned his words with not as much fire-and-brimstone like immediacy and often visceral pain as many more contemporary writers of working-class fiction tend to do (and especially those authors who feature and depict the often dangerous working and living conditions that coal miners face or have faced), Llewelyn (at least in my opinion) still manages in ALL ways to depict the bitter along with the sweet, shows the pain and multiple threats and dangers of mining work and how Huw Morgan's family is both defined by coal mining and ultimately also and sadly quite destroyed by it (describing Huw and his family's struggles, their trials, tragedies and tribulations but also their joys and simple pleasures caressingly, beautifully, descriptively and NEVER at least in my opinion with a tendency to either tedium or over exaggeration). One of my absolute favourites of the assigned novels I (as mentioned above) had to read for school, and yes, I am indeed very much personally pleased and tickled pink that my January/February 2019 perusal of How Green Was My Valley has stood the proverbial test of time for me and has been indeed in every fashion just as magical a reading experience this time around, for I was certainly more than a bit worried that I might not enjoy either Richard Llewellyn's prose style or the information he presents as much as I had as a teenager (but fortunately and gloriously, I need not have been worried, for How Green Was My Valley has indeed been a simply wonderful rereading experience for me, so much so that I will gladly give a five star rating, and yes, that said five star ranking pertains to both when I perused How Green Was My Valley as a teenager and now). ...more

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May 28, 2009 Chrissie rated it really liked it

Shelves: hf, great-britain

A beautifully written book. The language so well creates a time and space depicting Wales, coal mining of days passed, union struggles and both the wonders and hardships of the land. You grow to love the people. When the book is over you are so sad, but also happy to have met these wonderful people and been part of their lives.

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