Pages: 128
Released On: 12/05/2023
Up in the mountains of Bethesda, North Wales, Colin Tudur, a fifty-year-old football referee has endured a pitiful, people-pleasing existence. Finally chasing his dream, he commits to full-time training, quitting his job as a bin-man, one day dreaming of reffing on S4C. This far from serves his parasitic, coercive wife Clare and stepson Dale, who have both long grown dependent on his salary. Thwarted in his pursuit of freedom by North Wales’ second-home owner induced housing shortage, twenty-year-old Dale wallows within the confines of Colin’s isolated, mountain-top farm cottage. Freshly expelled from college, unemployable, and broken by his family’s toxic, co-dependent grooming, drug addiction steps in to fill his sorrow shaped hole. When a chance arises to enter the dealing game, a stab at ending this nightmare, he grips it with both hands, dragging a host of issues to the family’s door.
*****
Thanks to George for the gifted copy of his new book in return for an honest review.
I am not a prude by any means, and I do swear, but I’ve never been a fan of swearing just for the sake of it, and there is an awful lot in this. For some people, this may not be an issue, they may not even notice it much. But for me, it’s really jarring, and it stops me fully absorbing the actual plot of the sentences.
I also have very little interest in football beyond the England games, and so a lot of the scenes were lost to me, for their refereeing terms and whatnot. Again, if you’re more into that side of things then you’ll probably get more enjoyment out of it.
George has clearly got an interest and a knack in writing about people on the lower end of society, shall we say, down on their luck and struggling. Which means I often don’t find his books particularly cheerful. But I can appreciate his work in that. For giving voices to those that may otherwise be silent.
I will admit I got thrown with the characters for quite a while. There’s not many of them to be honest, but I felt they flowed into each other, and at times I wasn’t particularly sure who was who at the item, which means I didn’t get invested in their stories much. And what I did invest in, I didn’t like. I didn’t find any of them endearing or loveable or even likeable, I’m afraid.
Whilst I admire George’s ability and passion to write about struggling people in our society, and particularly those in Wales, I sadly did not enjoy this book. The topic and themes of it just weren’t my thing. But I’ve seen 5 star reviews of it online so this is most definitely about personal taste rather than his writing ability.
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