| The
White Trail by Fflur Dafydd - review by Anna Scott
The Guardian
Tuesday 11 October 2011
When his heavily pregnant wife Goleuddydd vanishes in
the midst of a busy supermarket, Cilydd's personal tragedy
generates a media feeding frenzy and becomes "TV
gold".
It's sensational stuff, and when Goleuddydd's body is
found cut open in a pigsty accompanied by the sinister
exhortation "Don't re-marry" written in blood,
the mystery deepens.
Entrusting
his cousin Arthur, a singularly unsuccessful private
eye, with the task of tracking down his missing baby
son, Cilydd is caught up in a series of unusual events,
culminating in a mission to rescue a beautiful girl
who leaves trails of white flowers in her wake.
Dafydd
seamlessly amalgamates the extraordinary into the everyday
in her reworking of "Culhwch and Olwen", a
tale from the Mabinogion. Although the central love
affair is insubstantial and tinctured with the surreality
of myth, Cilydd is convincingly real.
A
"prisoner in his own life", he comes to appreciate
that his feelings of grief, guilt and desire render
his existence more fulfilling.
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/11/white-trail-fflur-dafydd-review]
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