My People by Caradoc Evans: a review

I know, I know, this is another class book, but I am (albeit rather slowly) making my way through something from my personal collection, and there will be a review on that soon enough (though I don’t know quite how soon that’ll be).

            My People by Caradoc Evans is a short story collection following a series of Northern Welsh people. There’s a series of running themes, such as faith, marriage, obedience, and what it means to be Welsh.

            I’m not sure whether I enjoyed this book. I think I certainly enjoyed some of the stories, but I don’t know that I enjoyed the book on the whole. Perhaps that’s on me, though. I did read this book over two days because I left it last minute before my class. I’m usually better than that because I can’t read novels particularly quickly, but I got through it. Perhaps this is a book to dip in and out of, rather than plough through all at once.

            I think my issue with this was that it felt really repetitive. A lot of the same sort of plot points were hit in multiple stories, and the same sorts of themes showed up over and over again. This is why I think I should have spaced my reading of this one out a little bit more.

            I do think I’m glad that I read this book, but I don’t know that I’ll read it again. I’d say that this is the sort of book that I can firmly put down as ‘were this not a class book, I’d never have picked this up.’ I think if you like slice of life, but make it 1915 North Wales, then this might just be for you. Just don’t read it all at once, I’d say.

            Outside of academia, I wouldn’t know who to recommend this to. This really is outside of anything I’m likely to read in either my classwork or my personal life. So, I’m not necessarily going to recommend this because I cannot fully put my feelings on this into words.