See How They Run by Lloyd Jones

 review by Maryom

 Llwyd McNamara is a  not-very-succesful academic, just given the chance of a lifetime  - access to the research and notes compiled by deceased rival Dermot Feeney on the life and career of Big M, Dylan Manawyddan Jones, a Welsh rugby star whose sporting career came to a dramatic and untimely end with the death of his brother Ben. After that Big M's life has been a chequered one - running a hotel on the wild coast of Wales, then a pub, setting up a shoe shop and various other enterprises, always moving on to somewhere new after falling foul of the locals. As he scrolls through, and then deletes, the information on Feeney's memory sticks, Llwyd begins to discover links between his life and Big M's.

Seren's series of New Tales from the Mabinogion aims to take the old Welsh folk tales of heroes and kings and re-imagine them in a modern setting, so who better to take the place of a god-like hero than a Welsh rugby star?

See How They Run is a re-telling of the Third Branch of the Mabinogion: Manawyddan son of Llyr, and is actually one of the tales with which I was at least vaguely familiar - I've even read a previous re-working in Not For All The Gold In Ireland by John James - so I could see where the plot was going, how and where it fitted around the old one. What I didn't grasp while reading was why the story was told at second or even third hand as Llwyd read the story through Feeney's notes. Having finished, I read the afterword which helped slot things into place - so maybe just this once I should have read that first.

Maryom's review - 3.5 stars
Publisher - Seren Books
Genre - adult literary fiction, folk tales

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Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones

Handed Down Tale
review by Maryom


An African hotel supervisor has an affair and a child with a foreign tourist. He doesn't intend to abandon her though, but take the child back to his home in Berlin to be brought up by him and his wife. She determines to follow him at all costs and see her son again. The story follows her trek across Europe, exploited, helped or hindered by strangers.
I received this book as part of a promotion in which 100 copies were sent out to be read and reviewed and then handed on to new readers. These books are numbered so hopefully I should be able to track where this copy goes to and what future readers have to say about it.
Sad to say I was a little disappointed with Hand Me Down World. It started fine. I loved the way the story was told, passed on to the next person in the chain who picked it up and carried on - but when the goal of Berlin is reached the plot stalled and, although it picked up again later, I didn't feel it reached the momentum of the early chapters. This woman's story ought to have been heart-breaking BUT somehow it wasn't for me.

Publisher - John Murray (Publishers)

Genre - Adult Fiction

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