Gold

This started okay for me and I didn't expect to give it more than 3 stars to be honest. However, the second half of the book was much improved and we got to know the characters a bit more. Every year, for two weeks, Miyuki leaves her lover Grindl at home and visits the same seaside village. The

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locals know who she is but nothing about her. This year she decides to do something different which starts a chain of events that seem to change Miyuki.

An ambiguous ending (or so I thought) leaves you to wonder a lot. This really works in this case. The characters are so stereotypical of a local pub, it's fabulous. The novel is driven by the characters rather than the plot and I can why it was a little slow to begin with as they need to be drawn out for the reader to understand. A good short novel. One worth reading but not necessarily one that would make me seek out his other work.

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Set in the idyllic Welsh countryside, Gold is the story of Miyuki Woodward, a half-Japanese/half-Welsh interior designer who takes her two weeks vacation alone in the same village, in the same cottage, every year, away from her partner Grindle, in order to consolidate their love through separation.

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The novel takes place during the two weeks vacation and is set mainly in the village pub, The Anchor, and the surrounding countryside.

The story is fairly minimalistic – the biggest thing to happen in the village for a long time is Miyuki painting a rock gold... – but this matters not as the book is driven forward by the characters. The village locals are quirky, with tall Mr Hughes, short Mr Hughes and Mr Puw on one side of the pub, and Septic Barry & the Children from Previous Relationships on the other, and Miyuki is a really likeable lead. The star character, however, is the owner of the pub in which the novel is largely based – Mr Edwards. Mr Edwards is perfect, not used too much nor too little, and throughout the book barely says more than his favourite saying “Holy Mackerel!”.

This is my first Dan Rhodes novel, and it is clear that he is a gem of an author who chooses his words carefully. Descriptively speaking, Gold is a beautiful novel, but on a small scale. When describing (repeatedly) how Miyuki's contact lenses dance across the stove, his ability with words really shines through, but then when describing the sun sparkling on the golden rocks, I found it hard to picture, it didn't really jump out.

All in all, this little novel is a treat, I'm so glad to have found Dan Rhodes and I'm thoroughly looking forward to his latest book, Little Hands Clapping.

A beautiful, sweet and very funny book. Highly recommended.

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Dan Rhodes wrote a couple of really good short story collections (Anthropology: And a Hundred Other Stories and Don't Tell Me The Truth About Love), and then a novel (Timoleon Vieta Come Home), which showed first a lot of promise, and then, in Timoleon Vieta, the realisation of that promise.

He then

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went a bit bizarre, and wrote The Little White Car, a sort of surrealist chicklit novel based around the death of Princess Diana, which he published under the name of Danuta de Rhodes. I still haven't quite worked out what the point of it was...whether it was some complicated commentary on something or other, or whether it was just an attempt to appeal to a different market and make shedloads of cash. However, The Little White Car left me a little nonplussed, to say the least.

So, a new Rhodes novel, written under his own name ... I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Gold, thankfully is a return to the older-style Rhodes, and very good it is too (thus I continue to fail in my quest to find a book I can be bitchy about).

Miyuki Woodward is a Welsh woman in her early 30s who, for a fortnight every winter, takes a holiday by herself in a nondescript Welsh coastal village. She and her partner have fallen into the habit of each taking a separate holiday every year, the better to appreciate each other for the rest of the year. For her part, Miyuki has returned to the village often enough that she now forms a small part of the place's day to day activities. Every year she pitches up, goes for long walks, reads books, eats junk food, wanders into the pub every evening and drinks pints in the company of the locals, a crew of unchanging stalwarts content to let time gently pass by.

This year though, Miyuki is taken by a whim to do something different, and unwittingly catalyses a chain of events amongst the locals.

The strength of this novel is in the ordinary, and how even that can be extraordinary. The prose is relatively simple, and the plot slight, but Rhodes uses it deceptively well to add depth to his characters, all of whom, even the most incidental, take on a life of their own as Miyuki breezes through their existences. As Miyuki's actions take effect, there's a gentle tidal wave of affirmation and hope that builds through the novel ... only for a final sting all the more brutal for what has come before it.

It's not quite as strong as Timoleon Vieta but it's a quietly powerful book that finds much to celebrate about the day to day.

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A lightly surreal tale told through the eyes of a young woman who returns to a Welsh seaside town year after year to read, observe, 'fit in, get away, muse, and on this year do something that sets of a series of notable events in a town where normally noted events include chatter on alligators and

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septic tanks. Rhodes manages to pack a surprising amount of pathos into this slim, smartly written tome, where the repetition of the ordinary is interrupted temporarily and leads to revelation.

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A 30-year-old half-Asian who vacations alone on the coast of Wales and spends her days wandering around in the cold, downing beers at the pub, chewing her nails, and reading a book a day? Is this book about me? Not that I’ve ever vacationed, alone or otherwise, on the coast of Wales, but this

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charming little novel made me want to. Bad.

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Miyuki, half japanese/half welsh, spends two weeks of every year in a remote welsh village, a holiday away from her partner and life. The "action" happens mainly in the village pub, The Anchor, and the nearby coast. I say action, there isn't much of that. But still, there is a story, mainly driven

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forward by the sparse dialogue in the pub with the few regulars and in Miyuki's head giving us small glimpses into her life as well as the life of the few villagers we meet. And bit by bit we assemble our own version of the story. It is a little bit sweet for my taste, a little bit twee, but nevertheless beautifully written. It is warm, gentle, a little bit sad but lacks what I am looking for: challenge.

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