Library of Wales: The Heyday in the Blood

The village of Tanygraig on the Welsh-English border is the setting for this passionate novel of love and its consequences. Beti, the beautiful and wilful daughter of a pub landlord, is pursued by two men: Llew, her aggressive, red-haired cousin, and Evan, the dreamy miller and would-be poet. She has to make a choice but it's not her future alone that depends on her decision. She and Tanygraig are positioned precariously on borders of class, nation, language, and changing times. In this enduring novel by Geraint Goodwin, first published in 1936, Wales is associated with tradition and stability, England connotes modernity and movement. Beti is conscious of living at a temporal border: ‘The old way of things was ending; she had come at the end of one age and the beginning of another. Wales would be the last to go – but it was going…’
"It has filled me with a sense of seeing great talent trying its first flight, which I have not experienced since reading D.H Lawrence’s The White Peacock." Howard Spring
"Geraint Goodwin’s novels and short stories have bequeathed to us a vivid, moving and unsparing picture of early twentieth century Newtown and the surrounding countryside." Mary Oldham
"It is a mystery why a minor masterpiece like The Heyday of the Blood has been overlooked. Alternately comic and touching, this beautifully-observed and poetic chronicle of rural life deserves to be as widely enjoyed as the novels of H E Bates, Laurie Lee and even Thomas Hardy. Set on the border between Wales and England in the years of the Depression, The Heyday of the Blood describes the changes being wrought by modernisation and the reactions of the idiosyncratic inhabitants, which range from capitulation to resistance via drunken pranks. It is also a poignant romance: will the beautiful Beti choose the dreamy poet or the fiery poacher? And how will her father, the rambunctious keeper of the Red Lion Inn, respond?" Paul Duerdan
"Set on the Welsh English border in the 1930’s, The Heyday in the Blood explores issues of nationality, language and class with a humorous yet tragic story attached. Following the life of Beti Tudor, a pub landlord’s daughter, this novel is a product of its time and explores issues that are still up for debate nowadays. The in-depth descriptions of places and situations create a vivid image for the reader, providing an interesting if challenging read." Review in Buzz magazine -- Cyhoeddwr: Parthian Books
I’m always thrilled to receive a book in the Library of Wales series for review, but to receive one with an introduction by Katie Gramich is a double delight. Gramich provides a concise, considered and informative introduction that genuinely whets your appetite for the work of ‘this fascinating and unjustly neglected writer’, and the novel more than lives up to the expectations she raises. Set in the border village of Tanygraig in the early 1930s, The Heyday in the Blood tells the tale of sixteen-year-old Beti and the choice she has to make between the two young men vying for her affections: her ambitious, wayward cousin, Llew, and the gentle poet-cum-miller, Evan, each of whom holds a powerful appeal to different aspects of her nature. Goodwin’s ability to convey tension and raw emotion both within an individual and between two people is Lawrentian. There are scenes whose sensuousness sends shivers down the spine, yet whose animal ferocity is perfectly balanced by Goodwin’s skill in conveying an atmosphere that embraces warmth and humour. The young people’s story is set firmly within a community whose beautifully conjured array of personalities and sharply portrayed social and political divisions will remain instantly recognisable to anyone living in a similar community today. And it is this, perhaps, that gives the novel its contemporary pertinence and some of its enduring poignancy and power. Goodwin was writing about a dying way of life, about a Wales that was being engulfed by waves of incomers and the onward surge of ‘progress’: ‘the old way of things was ending; she had come at the end of one age and the beginning of another. Wales would be the last to go – but it was going.’ The same might be said seventy years later, yet Wales and the old ways are still very much alive. -- Suzy Ceulan Hughes @ www.gwales.com