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Charmian Savill reviews
Addlands
by Tom Bullough

Addlands can be located in the distinct context and lineage of Welsh novels related to agriculture and rural communities, such as Bruce Chatwin’s On The Black Hill (1982), Caryl Lewis’s Martha, Jac a Sianco (2004), Horatio Clare’s Running for the Hills (2006) and Lloyd Jones’s Y Dŵr (2009), which Jones has described as ‘a love song to the agricultural Wales of the past’, but one which also pertains to ‘the dark future of the human race’. Bullough’s novel, which spans the years 1941 to 2011, explores the loss of an intimate relationship with the natural order in the twin domains of ‘soil and soul’: a process of self-dispossession whereby people, embracing progress, manage ‘to be rid of the night’ and ‘usurp the stars’, breaking up the balance of existence.

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