My Piece of Happiness

This novel follows the paths of its characters in the pursuit of happiness against a backdrop of bedsits and terraced streets in Cardiff. It offers a wry depiction of outsiders and their painful relationship with conventional norms and expectations, playing on the reader’s expectations and pre-conceptions. The central character, George, is no longer able to form lasting relationships. Nonetheless, in his role as a social services worker he plays cupid to two young lovers, who happen to be clients at a mental handicap centre. Despite brief bliss, they soon fall foul of society’s circumscribed view of appropriate behaviour. George wreaks his revenge as best he can on the system, and then disappears into the city’s diaspora. Cardiff, its pub life and changing seasons, are conveyed with familiarity and affection. The author succeeds in implying the influence of the natural world on the city environment, even among the constantly shifting lives of the flat-dwellers who populate his work. The novel’s characters are presented with brush-stroke deftness; some of them are cameo gems. Especially effective are the dialogues and the play of language between individuals, evidence of the author’s experience in stage and television writing. Fundamentally a Steinbeckian novel about isolation and frustration, this also contains elements of black humour and a deeply humanistic faith in the notion that a single person can make a difference, if only for a while. Nonetheless, it also conveys a sense of rage in the face of overwhelming injustice against which individuals are impotent, regardless of intention and force of will. -- Liz Saville @ www.gwales.com