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The
White Trail by Fflur Dafydd
- Gwales review by Caroline Clark
(A
review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the
Welsh Books Council).
The multi-talented Fflur Dafydd
makes a touching and imaginative contribution to Seren’s
New Stories from the Mabinogion series, particularly
in her choice of material. The tale of Culhwch and Olwen
is an elaborate, even baroque, quest story which piles
task on impossible task and draws in a huge cast of
minor characters. Dafydd abandons the boar hunt which
forms the greater part of the original tale and focuses
instead on the previous generation: on Culhwch’s
father, Cilydd, and his grief for his dead wife and
lost son. Taking the hint from the meaning of some of
the original names, Dafydd binds her story together
with differing qualities of light: ‘Daylight’
murdered in a dark sty, Arthur’s ‘illuminated
corner’ in the midst of chaos, and Olwen’s
‘white dazzle’.
This
is still a quest story but of a kind only too familiar
today: a search for apparently ordinary people who inexplicably
disappear, and a stolen child’s search for his
true father. At first we are in the realm of realism
– of supermarkets, CSI and an online missing-persons
network. With the return of Culhwch, the magic comes
back: we find the secret house in an impenetrable forest,
the birds of Rhiannon who make men sleep and forget,
and Olwen, the white girl at whose feet flowers spring
up and whose light fights the darkness and evil of Ysbaddaden.
The resolution of the mystery might not entirely succeed
in binding these elements together (Ysbaddaden’s
‘castle’ feels more Torchwood than Bluebeard),
but the first section’s study of grief and the
magical atmosphere of the second are beautifully realised.
This
series continues to demonstrate the living power of
myth inspiring writers to create fresh new leaves on
the Tree of Tales.
Caroline
Clark
[http://www.gwales.com/bibliographic/?isbn=9781854115515]
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