How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Llewellyn

Paperback, 1991

Status

Available

Call number

823.912

Collection

Publication

Penguin Books Ltd (1991), Edition: New Ed, Paperback, 448 pages

Description

A young man comes of age in a quaint Welsh town.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Lesliejaneite
A few times in my reading life I have been so been so touched by a book that when it is over I feel a great loss and literally clasp the book to my chest like a loved-one just departed.
Some one once said, after seeing the beauty of Alaska, that he wished he had seen it as an old man, for it's
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magnificent beauty would surely spoil any scene he would ever see after. That's how I feel about this lovely, beautiful, wonderful book. I am afraid nothing I read will ever make me feel like this. I feel quite touched by it.
It's about a small coal-mining village in Wales and the people in it. The focus is on a big wonderful family that loves each other very much though they sure do have their share of trouble. The point of view is that of Huw, beginning when he is just 6 years old and going all the way to his middle age. The prose is, well, poetry. I collected my favorite bits in a list on the bag page but there are too many to fit here. Here's but a few:
"Beautiful were the days that are gone, and O, for them to be back. The mountain was green, and proud with a good covering of oak and ash, and washing his feet in a streaming river clear as the eyes of God. The winds came down with the scents of the grass and wild flowers, putting a sweetness to our noses, and taking away so that nobody could tell what beauty had been stolen, only that the winds were old robbers who took something from each grass and flower and gave it back again, and gave a little to each of us, and took it away again."

"...a tidy house, but open to the weather, and the winds had choir practice whenever they could on every side of it."

"Ceinwen was in my mind, and I kept her there as men keep libraries of rare books, seldom to be touched but happy to know you have got."

I wonder if anyone could ever write such a masterpiece again. If I ever thought I could be a writer, I don't now. I suppose I am just a reader, a proper bibliophile. With books like this, it's enough
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LibraryThing member PortM
I don't usually rate books that I haven't finished, but with Goodreads' new policy regarding reviews I've decided to change my own reviewing & rating policy. This is so that my average rating is a better reflection of my reading, because I don't bother finishing books that I dislike enough to rate
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lower than a 3 star. There are millions upon millions of books to experience, and life is too precious to waste it slogging through books I'm not enjoying.

I finished about half the book before abandoning. The characters were interesting, but the plot moved far too slowly. I struggled with the self-righteous, misogynistic, Victorian morality and attitudes. I understand it was the norm for the time period, but I really wanted to kick all the male characters in the teeth.
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LibraryThing member writestuff
Richard Llewellyn has crafted a fine modern day classic with his expansive family saga set in the late 1800s in a South Wales coal mining town. Huw Morgan, now an old man, is ready to leave his home forever as a black slag heap threatens the village. But, before he goes, he looks back on his
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childhood and young adult life. His memories include work in the coal mines and the formation of unions with their strikes and violence; as well as more tender moments of a boy's first love.

Beginning when Huw is only six years old, How Green Was My Valley is lovingly told and builds to its inevitable ending with a grace and simplicity enhanced by Llewellyn's fine voice and lyrical Welsh dialect. The characters that inhabit the novel are tender, humorous, strong and real. One of my favorites is Mr. Gruffydd, the village pastor, who befriends Huw and his family.

Llewellyn writes as a musician composes a great symphony - exacting, beautifully wrought, with an ear for poetry and harmony. How Green Was My Valley is a novel about family unity, love, the pain of disappointment and the joy of shared dreams; it is about the strength of neighbors and the beauty of the Welsh countryside. Exquisitely rendered, it is a story the reader immerses herself in and never wants to end.

Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member eglinton
There is lovely to read. Richard Llewellyn crafts a lyrical, yearning memoir (one assumes it must be rooted in his experience) of growing up in the Welsh mining valleys around the end of the19th century. The telling can be nostalgic but always seem authentic: the characters in his large family; the
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strikes and disputes with the mine owners; emigration to the New World as an outlet; solidarity and factionalism in chapelgoing and preaching; the strength and support, the camaraderie in the Valleys community, but also often its narrow-minded rebukes and exclusion; presentiments, sadly, of the Aberfan disaster (slag heaps towering above the village houses). Just as memorable are Llewellyn’s deep, sensual, enveloping descriptions of the touch and feel of things - of one’s pride and solemnity at putting on the first pair of long “trews”, of the vegetables “mixing in warm comfort together” to make a “potch”, of the feel of a kiss, and of why it’s the mouth we use for kissing, not the nose or eyes (still lyrically described, despite the absurdity).
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LibraryThing member elephant_issues
Beautiful language, beautiful writing. I only wish Huw's brothers would have been more strongly developed, since they all bled together for me. And then, sometimes it would be revealed that a character had gone away (for example) and I couldn't remember whether this departure had actually been
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previously addressed. Sometimes important details are thrown into one sentence, and if you blink, you'll miss the connecting plot line. But those are mostly minor details.

Ultimately, this would probably have been a five-star book for me if more of the episodes had been related in greater detail. Not necessarily expanded by pages, but just a little bit more to delve deeper into the incidents Llewellyn chooses to relate.
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LibraryThing member Skipstertoo
A standard-bearer for all literature to follow. In fact, this book ruined my ability to read banal crap. It set the bar high for all my future reading with its eloquent sentence construction and strong theme continuity.

And, can anyone ever forget the book's protagonist shouting out the title of
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the book after taking a maiden in the meadow for the first time?

Ahh, the sweet exuberance.
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LibraryThing member librisissimo
Llewellyn gives a striking portrait of a people and culture striving to survive in harsh conditions. The plot revolves around a single family of miners in a Welsh "Valley" typical of the period between World Wars, but is a vehicle for the history of unionization and the desperate need for more
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humane conditions in the industry, as well as a warning about the ravages of coal-mining on the land. Poignant tales of thwarted romance make up much of the family story. An excellent vignette of an interesting culture. The "Englishing" of the characteristic patterns of the Welsh language contribute to the picture in the beginning, but get cloying by the end.
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LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 international best-selling novel, How Green Was My Valley, stands the test of time as a literary classic. He tells the story through narration of the main character, Huw Morgan, of his Welsh family and the mining community in which they live. The novel is set in South
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Wales in the reign of Queen Victoria. The story is about the Morgans, a poor but respectable mining family of the South Wales Valleys. Huw's academic ability sets him apart from his elder brothers and enables him to consider a future away from this troubled industrial environment. His five brothers and his father are miners; after the eldest brother, Ivor, is killed in an mining accident, Huw moves in with his sister-in-law, Bronwen, with whom he has always been in love. His further development and how he deals with tragedy makes this an elementally interesting story.

The title of the novel appears in two sentences. It is first used in Chapter Thirty, after the narrator has just had his first sexual experience. He sits up to "... look down in the valley." He then reflects: "How green was my Valley that day, too, green and bright in the sun." The phrase is used again in the novel's last sentence: "How green was my Valley then, and the Valley of them that have gone."

While I read the book many decades ago when I was a teenager I came to it through first viewing the classic film version of the story. John Ford’s movie based on the novel won the Oscar as best movie of 1941, and I remember my first viewing as it stood out even on our small television screen. Roddy McDowell is the image of Huw Morgan and I remember still the faces of Walter Pigeon and Maureen O'Hara and the beautiful hills and valley. I was moved by the admittedly melodramatic scenes and led inexorably to Llewellen's original.
Set in a Welsh coalmining village in the last quarter of the 19th century, its themes of spiritual longing and soaring opposed to physical yearning and bondage are developed in a language that is both lucid and rich in the storytelling tradition. The author delights readers by his incisive observations of quotidian phenomena that, although set in a distant time and place, seem universal in character. This is what it takes to write a novel that transcends generations. This was a melancholic elegy for departed loved ones and the vanished way of life of a Welsh coal mining town and it is one of the most beautiful books that I have ever read.
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LibraryThing member vicarofdibley
A very Welsh story of a mining family a classic of our times i wish more people would read it
LibraryThing member ParadisePorch
The novel is set in Wales in the 1880s and 1890s, during the reign of Queen Victoria and tells the story of the Morgans, a respectable mining family, through the eyes of the youngest son, Huw.

His five brothers and his father are miners but Huw’s academic ability sets him apart from his elder
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brothers and enables him to consider a future away from this troubled industrial environment.

Oh, what a beautiful book! The countryside, the language, the characters. There is much tragedy, but there is much joy as well. The only complaint I have is the truncated ending- very unsatisfying, and keeps it from earning a perfect 5.

Right, you – read this one too. 4½ stars
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LibraryThing member muddyboy
I really liked this book. It is a coming of age story of a Welsh boy growing up at turn of the twentieth century. It is about family, love, friendship, death and unionism and it is written with much affection toward the characters. It reads a bit like a Masterpiece Theater script so if you enjoy
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those on PBS you will like this book.
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LibraryThing member samlives2
I absolutely adored this book, and I'm so glad my boyfriend isn't bright enough to keep my birthday presents to himself, which clinched my receiving it.
Anyway, I could never really decide while reading this whether it was tragic or comic or dark or light-hearted or serious or ridiculous. This book
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is everything rolled into one, and a great example of a coming-of-age story done right.
I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone willing to take on all 500 pages of complicated prose and open to its many themes and "deep" ideas. If you're not up for it, or are looking for something easy on the brain, I wouldn't advise picking this up as it would probably ruin the book for you.
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LibraryThing member bookwoman247
This is the story of a Welsh coal-mining family at about the turn of the Twentieth Century as narrated by the youngest son, Huw Morgan.

I felt a great sympathy for Huw and his entire family, in spite of the males' proclivity for fighting - settling scores with their fists.

The story was beautiful and
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poignant. The author's gift of storytelling is obvious. This was a wonderful book altogether.
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LibraryThing member countrylife
Ah, my little one, such a good book it is.

If a sense of place is uppermost in your reading needs, this book delivers. The valleys of Wales come alive through this story of a family who make their living in the coal mines; the breath-taking beauty, then the heart-breaking change as mining scars
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their landscape.

In and out of the sunlight, under the shadow of the trees, into their coolnesses, where leaf mould was soft with richness and held a whispering of the smells of a hundred years of green that had grown and gone, through the lanes of wild rose that were red with blown flower, up past the flowering berry bushes, through the pasture that was high to the knees, and clinging, and that hissed at us with every step, up beyond the mossy rocks where the little firs made curtseys, and up again, to the briars, and the oaks, and the elms, where there was peace, and the sound of grasshoppers striking their flints with impatience, and birds playing hide and seek, and the sun blinding hot upon us, and the sky, plain bright blue.

This is the story of a large, close, family living in the time of Queen Victoria; their relationships, growing up, education, illnesses and deaths, home life and livelihood, … and song - all of it rich in detail. Huw Morgan prepares to leave his home of 50 years, all relatives having passed on, and the house overtaken by slag. With that ugly backdrop, the beauty of his memories of the valley of his youth fuel the story.

5 stars for character, setting, story, and writing all.
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LibraryThing member Bill_Masom
I liked this book very much. Very well written.
LibraryThing member infjsarah
I struggled with this a bit. I had read it before about 30 years ago and think I had the same reaction then. I much preferred the books written by the actual miners of the time such as "Cwmardy" etc. My fellow reading group members loved the writing style and density of sections but I was skipping
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bits. Not my cup of tea.
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LibraryThing member Gwendydd
This is a stunningly beautiful book. The prose is amazing - it captures the lilt of the Welsh language, and the Welsh love of poetry and song.

The plot is about the unionization of Welsh coal miners and labor conflicts. The story follows the Morgan family, and their role in the conflicts in their
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valley. But what the book is really about is love between family and friends. Llewellyn portrays many different relationships in painfully real terms - the characters are incredibly vivid, and he finds amazing ways to describe relationships that most people would consider indescribable.
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LibraryThing member LadyintheLibrary
Surprisingly poor. Also darker than I expected - the whole family is a little wrong-headed.
LibraryThing member leslie.98
Lovely writing in this story of a Welsh family in a coal-mining village (I think in the Rhondda valley area altough the author didn't specify) from about 1890 to 1910.

While ostensibly about the Morgan family, this novel is documenting the end of an era. I had seen the film but years ago and I was
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struck when reading this by the similarities to the more recent film "Brassed Off" about the colliery closings in northern England (Yorkshire?) during Margaret Thatcher's time. Different times and places but the same loss of a way of life & the same sense of sadness.

Some of Llewellyn's descriptions caught my breath such as this one of Angharad when fighting with 14-year-old Huw:

" 'I hate you,' she said, and wrapped her cloak round her so that she was a black pillar, with a white face and her eyes with glitter and shine to make you afraid."

Even though I knew the ending, I found myself weeping. It wasn't just the death of Huw's father but the sense of alone-ness with all his brothers gone, one dead and 4 overseas. And the loss of the family home which is being buried by the slag heaps (as the reader knows from the very first page) just makes it all more poignant.
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LibraryThing member Othemts
This novel is a coming-of-age story set in the Welsh coal mining region that blends sentimental nostalgia with gritty reality. The narrator is Huw Morgan, the 8th of 9 children and the youngest son in a family of coal miners. An accident in Huw's childhood makes him unable to walk for several years
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and during that time he develops a passion for reading that leads to him going on to higher levels of education than the rest of his family.

Through the novel Huw observes the conflicts between the miners and the companies that own the mines that leads to union organizing and strikes. Huw's father Gwilym and some of his brothers are opposed to activism while other brother are labor organizers. Over time the declining fortunes in the valley lead to Huw's siblings leaving Wales to try their luck elsewhere. Huw also observes the environmental degradation to the valley by the mining operations. The novel also deals with gossip and scandals in the valley such as affairs and unplanned pregnancy. While Gwilym supports Huw's education, his mother Beth is firmly against it, especially when Huw's teacher only speaks in English and discriminates against the Welsh.

There are apparently a whole series of books about Huw Morgan, but I think I've had my fill of Huw. The style of writing is too old-fashioned for my taste although I can see why it's considered a classic novel. I once watched the film adaptation of How Green Was My Valley as a teenager (mainly because I had a crush on Maureen O'Hara) but I don't remember it at all. I will have to rewatch the movie and see how faithful it is to the book.
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LibraryThing member satyridae
I adored this book. I somehow managed to miss it till just a couple of years ago. The language is lovely, the story well-told. I should read it again. It passed the test, and lives on my shelves. The test? If I wake at 3 am and need to look up a passage, can I wait till the library opens? If no,
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buy book, add to shelf.
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LibraryThing member Carol420
This melancholic elegy for departed loved ones and the vanished way of life of a Welsh coal mining town is one of the most beautiful books ever written. The narrator, Huw Morgan, tells the story of the lives and loves of his extended family and their townfolk as their closeknit community
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disintegrates under the pressures of modern life and the decreasing profitability of the mine--from brothers who have to move to America to make a living or others who are killed in the coal pits, to the widowed sister-in-law who Huw loves for years but never tells, to Mr. Gruffudd the local minister who helps Huw through childhood paralysis & becomes his tutor, to Dai Bando who teaches him to box and most of all to the beloved parents who suffer long but love greatly. The language itself is lyrical and haunting, the story ineffably sad. But always, Huw reminds us that these remarkable people live on in him.

This is the second time I have read this book. The first time I don't think I fully appreciated it as I was 16 years old and was being "forced" to read it for a literature class. I am so glad I gave it another look after I had matured. It is indeed a true classic that is timeless.
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LibraryThing member burritapal
So beautifully written, it almost makes you cry for the beauty described of a small part of the planet and what is lost when it's gone.
This is the story of a Welsh valley (part of the five valleys) and its inhabitants, that in the mid-1800s still had a small population in its village, but because
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of the colliery, grew in population, with other collieries opening. As all crapitalism does, its slaves were bent on corrupting the owners, making haters out of its workers, and taking from the Earth, destroying its beauty, and giving nothing back, all in adulation to the almighty dollar.
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LibraryThing member kslade
I really enjoyed this one about a boy growing up in the Welsh coal fields. Good observations on life, death, sex (in a good way), etc.
LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
Richard Llewellyn has an amazing voice. There were so many passages I wanted to quote because they were all just so beautifully written. How Green Was My Valley is told from the first person perspective of Huw Morgan, looking back on his childhood in a small mining town in Wales. Huw comes from a
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large family of his parents, five brothers and three sisters. They live in an isolated valley in a community governed by the ways of God and the land. As Huw grows older and heads off to school he learns about the uglier side of growing up, like being bullied for being the new kid. After the first day of school Huw's father and brothers teach him how to fight. [As an aside: this surprised me. Growing up with five older brothers, surely Huw would encounter a scuffle or two? It seems so unlikely that the siblings would never fight among themselves.] But, it was the harder lessons Huw learned that were more difficult to swallow: the poverty and starvation during the leaner months, what happens when desire gets out of hand and leads to rape and murder, and the death of a family member.
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Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

1939

Physical description

448 p.; 7.7 inches

ISBN

0140184651 / 9780140184655
Page: 0.3813 seconds