One Moonlit Night: The unmissable new novel from the million-copy Sunday Times bestselling author of A Beautiful Spy

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Alone in the midst of chaos, her husband Philip has been missing for ten months since the British army’s retreat from Dunkirk, Maddie takes Sarah and Alice to Knyghton in Norfolk to stay with Philip’s elderly Aunt Gussie. Maddie is caught in limbo, unable to grieve for Philip, unable to make decisions, not accepting his probable death, while living in an isolated country house – where Philip spent his childhood – which is the focus of long-held rumour and superstition in the nearby village. Readers in general seem very mixed about this novel. Some loved it. Others were disappointed or bored. In this blog, I will briefly tease out what made this novel work, and what didn’t, as well as how to fix it.

But Olivia! The text clearly dumps exposition that Lyle had taken to Anna as soon as he'd first met her. Interspersed with Maddie’s story are chapters featuring Philip in a timeline roughly a year before Maddie leaves London, following the incident which left him missing in action but believed dead. As he recovers from his injuries, helped by many people risking their own lives to help him, he is forced to head south to make his way out of France to find his way home. There was plenty of tension surrounding him and the risks involved with all of his actions, to the point that I found myself willing him to make it home, and it felt like the perfect foil for the secrets and mysteries that Maddie was dealing with.I honestly don’t read enough historical fiction. I’m not entirely sure why and I can’t off hand remember the last one I read. One Moonlit Night was my first Rachel Hore read I believe even though I do own at least one more of her books, but it won’t be the last. I have a taste for historical fiction now and I’m itching for more. This is a stunning depiction of life during the war, for those left behind in England and also the men who faced the battle fields. Prichard was also a wonderful writer but, unlike Thomas whose heart lies interred in the earth and whose soul is in Heaven (hopefully), Prichard's entire being, his entire life-force, his heart, his soul, his mind, his everything are contained - alive and vibrant - within the narrative of this book. But the more serious issue is the way in which the novel begins. The framing device completely destroys the tension of Grace’s disappearance towards the end of the novel. Religion is also central to the novel: Church and Chapel, along with a fair amount of singing. There is a good deal of Biblical language and a fair amount of Church going (that wasn’t a trigger warning!). It is about a brutal childhood and about three boys: the narrator, and his friends Huw and Moi. There isn’t really a plot, more a series of episodes which move around within the time frame. Some of the episodes are almost hallucinogenic and comparisons have been made with Under Milk Wood, but the differences are greater than the similarities. And there is great power here:

Initially she feels very unwelcome and begins to feel she may have made a mistake, however as time progresses she begins to form bonds with them and they all start to settle. His best-known work is Un Nos Ola Leuad (1961), set in a mythologically subversive version of his native area. [3] The novel was made into a film in 1991 by the Gaucho Company. The narrator of 'One Moonlit Night' is a boy who is around ten years old. He lives in a small village with his mother, who raises him on her own. Most people in the village are poor. The story happens at around the time of the First World War. Our unnamed narrator describes his life in the village, the adventures he has with his best friends Huw and Moi, the poverty that people experience everyday, how people are still happy and show kindness to each other inspite of being poor, the role of the church in village life, how the war impacts the life of the people and the tragedy and occasional glory it brings, how a child's life can suddenly change and be turned upside down because of things that grownups do – these and other things are explored in the book. Our ten year old narrator's voice is beautiful and charming and his friendship with his besties Huw and Moi is beautifully depicted. The narrator even falls in love with a girl who is older than him and it is beautiful and sad at the same time. I love the way the narrator's voice takes us into the mind of a ten year old boy and makes us see the world through his eyes. It is brilliant. Caradog Prichard manages to capture that time so beautifully and there are many scenes which made me smile with pleasure and there are also some scenes that made me cry.Rachel Hore has been a go-to author of mine for some years, and One Moonlit Night was a completely engrossing saga about a family during the Second World War. There are secrets and betrayals that exist, burdening the family members as tragedies divide them. I won't spoil anything, but in the chapter before the last there is an incident that is basically the description of something that really happened to the author. It's very credible. But, unfortunately, in the last chapter there is a situation that doesn't seem credible - a conclusion that doesn't seem to fit with the character. Maybe some people will like it, but for me it was like another person writing the ending, or as if Prichard had no idea how to end - maybe he didn't want to tell what really happened to him, going to London to work, maybe he thought it was too banal - and decided to create something a bit exagerated. But this something is not satisfactory imho. We are thrilled to see Caradog Prichard’s work adapted by the talented Marc Evans in its native language. It is an astonishing book. A dreamscape that inextricably melds together the pignut-hunting, hymn-singing, game-playing, bread-and-butter-eating memories of a boy in a Welsh slate-mining village in the time of the Great War with the suicides, adulteries, perversions, violence, and deaths that accompany them. The recurring phrase “ It was a moonlit night just like tonight” only emphasizes the dreamlike quality of the novel – wonderfully translated from the Welsh by Philip Mitchell.

Maddie goes to live with Philip's cousin-in-law. She first notes how much Lyle looks like Phillip. Oh, here we go. If Lyle was Phillip's brother or twin I'd give a pass, but a cousin? Ok. Not long after she first meets Lyle, she begins to feel a physical attraction to him. I get that she was shaken by the bomb that led her to seek a home elsewhere and she had to deal with the aftermath alone, with no husband close by and two daughters to take care of. Prichard worked feverishly, eating and drinking very little while writing the book and, as soon as it was finished, he retired to bed for several days and nights - physically and emotionally drained but in a sense refreshed and reborn as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. I get what this book was going for. It's not about perfect people, but sympathy and suspension of disbelief can only last so long until characters start acting stupid out of nowhere. By the end of it all, I struggled to see the point or what the story was trying to say. Obviously if Grace is waiting in a tea-shop for an unknown woman in 1977, at the beginning of the novel, she can’t have vanished into thin air or been murdered in 1941 towards the end! One Moonlit Night 1995 (English) full translation by Philip Mitchell. (translated from Prichard's Welsh)The novel takes many twists and turns but always keeps the reader guessing, not falling into the trap of a predictable story! No other country but Wales could spawn the mind that could create such a work.” -- Niall Griffiths One Moonlit Night ( Un Nos Ola Leuad), Caradog Prichard’s melodious Welsh-language novel, written entirely in local dialect, was first published in 1961. It is a haunting portrayal of life in Bethesda, a small North Wales town on the edge of Snowdonia and offers a bleak but beautiful child’s-eye depiction of rural existence during the First World War. This passage made me cry even more. I can't tell you why he is crying. You have to read the book to find out.

For many, many others, however, it's a mind-blowing, life-changing, world-shaking experience akin to being allowed for several hours to stare into the face of God. It will change your life. I think that’s why the book has such a strong sense of the child’s love for the village and its inhabitants. Pritchard’s narrator knows every inhabitant and how they are related. He knows too every inch of his village; each street and lane being but a playground for him and his best friends Huw and Moi. I really like stories set in large ancestral homes in a rural setting. They are always appealing; I find the descriptions of nature restful, there are always plenty of secrets hidden within and scope for strained relations and mysteries at the heart of the household. She felt overwhelmed and lonely, but this is just too much, too soon, too forced. I didn't buy it for one second. She is married with two children, Philip is recently pronounced missing not dead, and there is no indication that she hates her husband or has lost feelings for him. On the contrary, she thinks about him non-stop. And Lyle is bland as toast, they have no chemistry together. Maddie had more of it with Gussie but of course, the only single male character is hovering close by so she had to hook up with him.Multi layered, with themes of betrayals and secrets and the all enduring love between a husband and wife separated by war, it’s an absolutely compelling and evocative read.