West

This book was, for me a very fast read, it's a short book with a big punch.

It tells the story of Cy Bellmann, a pioneering Brit who has previously emigrated to Pennsylvania to farm mules and horses, this act alone tells us he is man not averse to taking a great risk to achieve what he wants in life even if it is to the cost of those dear to him, you'd think he'd be satisfied with what he has! Now widowed and left alone with just his young daughter Bess who is now 10, for company, like many of us, he knows there must be something greater than his humdrum life.

He's only 35 but boy does this guy have a sudden mid life crisis. He hears news of a momentous discovery far away in Kentucky, a pile of colossal animal bones. He is convinced this skeleton reveals the presence of a yet undiscovered wondrous living creature and it ignites a fire in him he hasn't felt since before his wife died, he burns to be the one to find this huge animal.

Talk about throwing caution to the wind - he buys a new hat and overcoat, clambers on a horse and sets off in a Westerly direction, abandoning his only daughter to the not so tender ministration of his curmudgeonly spinster sister Julie telling her vaguely he may be back in a couple of years.

The book in turns follows his trail throughout the wild and inhospitable West as he follows his unlikely and foolhardy quest. Then it follows Bess as she matures without the love of a parent, and spends time at the library trying to follow his likely progress on maps.

The book is sparse without much of the embroidery and detail which often fills works of pioneers on a great journey yet it paints a starkly beautiful image of a land so vast that it is indeed possible creatures could be hiding and never have been seen in living memory. Cy encounters Native Indians and gets himself a travel companion/guide, a young American Indian lad with a wonderful tongue in cheek name, who speaks not a word of English.

Meanwhile whilst he is away, Bess grows older and begins to attract very unwelcome attention of the wrong sort and her Aunt who barely even acknowledges her is no protector.

This is a simple tale of how grief coupled with a deep yearning can cause us to lose sight of the treasures we already have, in the never ending quest for "there must be more than this".

It is also about seeking atonement and mentally punishing oneself for past deeds, whilst telling oneself that it is for the greater good that one makes decisions and not for self gratification.

It is a delectably enjoyable book and is almost allegorical in its nature with the extinct species at the heart of the tale continuing to have an impact over the years, how grief manifests itself as guilt and no matter how deeply buried the skeletons are they eventually rise to the surface, and the moral that even if there is something bigger than us out there it doesn't necessarily follow that it is what we need for our own survival.

The ending is satisfying and the path to reach it is a terrible and awesome journey of deprivation and dogged determination. A lovely little fable with great characters.

I finished this very short novel wanting more but realising that it had said it all already. An insubstantial story, really, but some striking themes (the outstanding one being grief - for a wife, a family and a nation) and images of an America with vast areas still to be explored. Cy’s need to find something wonderful in his life, effectively abandoning the most wonderful thing he already has, his daughter, and his eventual realisation of this, has a deeper poignancy than I’d expected. I was very struck, too, with his relationship with his young Native American guide and the way it developed over the months from mutual ambivalence to, if not outright affection, a kind of accommodation despite their lack of a common language.

A real treat to read and it has prompted me to seek out her collections of short stories as soon as I can. Highly recommended.

4.5*

Carys Davies’s debut novel West is a work of historical fiction set on the American frontier in the early 19th Century. John Cyrus Bellman, a thirty-five year old widower and mule breeder, reads about sensational discoveries of fossils in Kentucky and, for the first time since the death of his wife, his imagination is fired up. He feels that he has found his calling – that of travelling West in a bid to see the bones for himself, and possibly trace the giant creatures which might still be roaming deep in uncharted territory. The scepticism of friends and relatives does not deter him, and he leaves upon this quest, even though this means leaving his beloved daughter Bess behind him, in the care of his sister. Thus the novel unfolds, alternating between an account of John’s voyage and a description of Bess’s journey into adulthood.

Carys Davies has published two collections of short stories and she brings to a larger canvas the pithiness and conciseness which characterize the best short-story writers. At 160 pages, West might be better described as a novella, and yet it often has the epic feel of a much longer novel. It is a “western” in the best sense of the word, evoking the vast open spaces of an unknown America ripe for discovery. But it is also an intimate and poetic work, as the third person narration delves into the innermost thoughts of Bess, John and, at a later stage, the young Native American who accompanies John on his journey. The fable-like simplicity of the novel’s language does hinder it from facing big issues head-on – endings, beginnings and survivals; fate, faith and the nature of belief; personal and collective memory. West is a quick read but I suspect that its images will long resonate in my mind.

This is a short novel to read and I appreciated that as it was an engaging quick read. The concept of the story was fascinating, which reminded me that ther was a time when the whole world seemed new. Engaging characters and a vivid depiction of the differing locations made this an enjoyable read.