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On the Black Hill

Bruce Chatwin

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Nov 20, 2016 Michael rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, england, fiction, rural-life, netgalley, 1001-books, wales

A warm-hearted and somewhat bleak tale of identical twin brothers, Benjamin and Lewis, living out their lives together on a rural farm on the border of Wales and England. The initial scenes of their comfortable routines in their 80’s are followed by a step back to the origin of their lives soon after the marriage of their parents at the end of the 19th century. They settle into the life of tenant sheep farmers, fixing up an old farmhouse they call “The Vision” close by the beautiful “Black Hill” A warm-hearted and somewhat bleak tale of identical twin brothers, Benjamin and Lewis, living out their lives together on a rural farm on the border of Wales and England. The initial scenes of their comfortable routines in their 80’s are followed by a step back to the origin of their lives soon after the marriage of their parents at the end of the 19th century. They settle into the life of tenant sheep farmers, fixing up an old farmhouse they call “The Vision” close by the beautiful “Black Hill”.

We get a vision of an idyllic life for the twins growing up on this farm, which they would almost never leave. Lewis is more physical and likes girls; Benjamin was more sensitive and spiritual, loves to tend to the lambs and wants only to be with Lewis forever. The light would literally go out of his eyes when separated from Lewis. They are almost separated when Lewis falls for a local girl and when Benjamin gets drafted for the Great War, but fate seems to intercede. Their father, before he dies, works out a way to purchase the farm. With Lewis’ brawn and Benjamin’s talent for business, they make a go of keeping their little paradise going despite any upheavals in the distant world. After their mother dies, they keep everything in the house the same. Their main concession to changing times is to adopt a tractor for plowing.

Thus the tale is a bit of a fairy tale of resilience to change and keeping family bonds alive and the life of a place called home forever. I was moved by the little dramas in their life and that of villagers in their community. I mentally place this book among other admired stories that I consider “biography of place”. I loved Chatwin’s effortless capturing of the rhythms of nature at the farm, as here reflected in the senses of the twins’ mother Mary:
The winter was hard. From January to April the snow never melted off the hill and the frozen leaves of foxgloves drooped like dead donkeys’ ears. Every morning she peered from the bedroom window to see if the larches were black or crisped with rime. The animals were silent in the deep cold, and the chatter of the sewing machine could be heard as far as the lambing paddock.

I loved the subtle humor bordering on satire about class relations. For example,
Mrs. Bickerton was a frail fair-skinned woman in her later thirties. As a girl, she had devoted herself to painting, and had lived in Florence. Then, when her talent seemed to desert her, she married a handsome but brainless cavalry officer, possibly for his collection of Old Masters, possibly to annoy her artist friends.
‘I like the Welsh,’ Mrs, Bickerton went on. ‘But they do seem to get so angry, later. It must be to do with the climate.’

The twin’s father Amos does harbor a temper bottled up inside his inarticulate self. At first, he kept in check, along with his tender feelings:
He treated her as a fragile object that had come by chance into his possession and might easily break in his hands. He was terrified of hurting her, or letting his hot blood carry him away. The sight of her whalebone corset was enough to unman him completely.

But Mary’s attempts at creativity and cooking based on her readings did not fare well. For his constipation, she began to plan for some healthy vegetables in the garden:
But when she suggested planting an asparagus bed, he flew into a towering rage. Who did she think she was? Did she think she’d married into the gentry?
The crisis came when she experimented with a mild Indian curry. He took one mouthful and spat it out. ‘I want none of your filthy Indian food,’ he snarled, and smashed the serving dish on the floor.

Almost all my friends on Goodreads rate this book higher. But my “B” rating is relative to the wonderful books on rural life and coming of age that I have sought out, driven in part by my origins from a place in Oklahoma where our nearest neighbor was a mile away. Among these other reads I am most attracted to ones that capture the necessary personal transformations or the surpassing of hardships that make one capable of dealing with the larger adult world. Just as with a rare book on utopia, a tale devoted to preservation of the good life hooks me less than ones where the character must deal with a dystopian society or a dysfunctional family through a pathway of tough moral choices. An example of such a book for me is McMurtry’s “The Last Picture Show”. The nostalgia aspects of this book are close to that of “My Antonia” and “Jayber Crow”, but the former excels for me by incorporating more personal change and the latter by capturing the vitality of a community. The closest in plot is Haruf’s “Plainsong”, which also features a pair of bachelor farmer brothers, but their taking in a pregnant teenager opens the door to substantial change in their lives.

This book was provided by the publisher as an e-book through the Netgalley program.
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Jun 28, 2024 Karin rated it it was ok

Shelves: wales, drama, depressing, play-book-tag, family, family-relationships, adult, novels, british, british-author

I started off thinking that this book would be 4 stars for me since the writing is good and it seemed warm hearted, but I disliked it by the end. I like stories about twins (grew up with a pair of ID twins as friends), but as the book progressed and I saw how Lewis was manipulated into remaining single by his mother and twin brother even though he longed to get married, etc, and also how he was manipulated in other ways by them, plus his father was rather nasty, it quite spoiled it for me.

Yes, I ...more

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May 18, 2015 Kristel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, 1001-challenge

This is a five star book for me, loved this story and it read so easily that I was able to finish this book in record time for me. This author died at 48. That is a loss to the literary world. The story of a place on the border of Wales and England that began in the 1890s and goes to the 1980s. So a span of 100 years makes this a fresh look of how life has changed. The Twins are the main protagonist but here are many other characters that add to the story. My book stated on the cover leaf; Bruce ...more

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