Emyr HumphreysCritiques

A middle aged couple. Aled and Marian, worry when they meet their daughter's boyfriend and plan to send her to visit old family friends in Italy but things don't turn out as they wish. Later they take the trip themselves and become involved in another young girl's life - will they make the same mistakes?

This is a story that examines how well we know other people or indeed ourselves. As Aled looks back on his life and marriage; his student days and the future of his academic career can he still learn anything about himself and Marian and is their any hope for the future.

I liked the Welsh background and the relationships in this book. I also enjoyed the academic side and the contrast of life in Anglesey and Tuscany. The way the author weaves his story made it well worth reading.

Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award in 1953, and it's easy to see why it would be rated highly: an amiable, if unobtrusive sense of humor, a reliably unreliable narrator, and a willingness to defy narrative expectations. The themes are important ones, too: the human tendency to build stories out of our rather shabby lives and the workings of conscience and, presumably, grace.