How Green Was My Valley

On Amazon.com, the average rating for How Green was My Valley is 4.6 stars. On GoodReads, the rating is 4.31. When I was Googling the book, I found it on several people's list of best books ever. I personally didn't think it was that great of a book. (On a technical note, I wonder if people who like books are more likely to rate and review them, which would skew the average rating higher than what it would be if all who read the book ranked it.)



Before I write about all the things I didn't like in this book, I should say that I have no knowledge of Welsh geography or history. I don't know anything about custom and culture there. And perhaps I'm not literary enough to really appreciate the prose of a book like this. That might skew my opinion of this book, but it was really hard for me to get through it and towards the end, I was just slogging to the end so that I could be done with it.

I didn't think that there were memorable characters. For a novel that covers such a long period of time, all the characters were remarkably consistent in their attitudes and actions. I didn't see any real growth in them.

The book felt way too long to me. The story was slow and it was hard for me to keep all the characters straight. One piece of someone's life would crop up and then disappear so that you never find out what happens. The novel is a family saga, and I suppose that it's somewhat realistic that all the loose ends aren't tied up, especially when told from one person's perspective. But, I just don't like it as a novelistic device. If this were my family history, I would love reading it like this, but it just made for a winding, indirect story.

The connection through the whole novel is the Valley where Huw's family lives. (I don't know much about Welsh names, but out of all that Llewelyn uses in the book, "Huw" is my least favorite.) The economy there based on coal and how that disintegrates over time, the degradation of the environment due to the mining, and the eventual disintegration of the whole community because of the way mining changes during this time period. But, the story of the strikes and the coal and the labor unions wasn't very interesting to me for some reason. So, it didn't feel very coherent to me.

And speaking of Huw, the narrator, there sure were a lot of times when he somehow conveniently overhears a conversation so that the reader will know what's going on in the larger family. It often seemed somewhat contrived.

In some of the reviews I read, people talked about the lovely descriptive prose. I didn't really like the long prose sections. Again, it probably reflects more on my literary tastes rather than the actual value of the book. But, I felt like these sections were way too long and overly sentimental. I started getting fed up with them towards the end so that I started to scan.

I also had a hard time getting past the way women were portrayed in the book, the vigilante-ism of the community, the parental authoritarianism, the moral strictness, and the narrow mindedness of the community, especially about religion. I couldn't set aside my values and enjoy the book for a peek into history, if that indeed is what it was.

The one part that resonated some with me with the narrator's connection to the Valley. This [highly edited!] passage illustrates his feelings (and also the prose style of Llewellyn)

The Valley was part of us and we were part of the Valley, not one more than the other, never one without the other. Of me was the Valley and the Valley was of me, and every blade of grass, and every stone, and every leaf of every tree, and every knob of coal, or drop of water, or stick or branch or flower or grain of pollen, or creature living, or dust in the group, all were of me as my blood, my bones, or the notions from my mind.

My Valley, O my Valley, within me, I will live in you eternally. Let Death or worse strike this mind and blindness eat these eyes if thought or sight forget you.

This is the selection for our book group in March which I almost certainly won't be attending. I am curious, though, what other women thought of the book.