MOTHER'S DAY SPECIALS! SHOW ME MORE
Bruce Chatwin reinvented British travel writing with his first book, In Patagonia, and followed it with four other books, each unique and extraordinary. He died in 1989.
In the 'black velvet stars and the hexagons of printed calico' that make up the patchwork quilt that covers their bed, unmarried twins Lewis and Benjamin Jones can summon lost memories of the one woman they truly loved - their mother Mary. This novel too has a mesmerizing patchwork structure. Piecing together the thousand events that take place over 80 years in the farm known as 'The Vision', Chatwin arrives at something truly epic. In all his restless journeying, he never wrote a better nor more visionary novel than this one, located closest to home. Dirk Bogarde wrote of On the Black Hill: 'This book was my first meeting with Chatwin. A splendid way to start with this extraordinary writer due now, I would say, to be 'de-hyped' after some years of awe. Whatever is done to him by the intellectual literati lot his power will remain, and this wild, moving, wonderfully researched and, above all, understood, story of two brothers (and those around them) on the bleak, bold, glorious Black Hills of the Welsh borders will remain for all time. He writes so perfectly, so clearly, with such staggering economy, that one is constantly catching one's breath at the splendour that is evoked by perfectly simple, uncomplicated, words beautifully and skilfully set down before delighted eyes. His writing is like clear spring water rather than sugared synthetic liquid in cans.' (Kirkus UK)
