‘West’ by Carys Davies

I don’t usually do reviews. I have to get really, really excited about something to bother reviewing it.

2pm on a sunny Bank Holiday Saturday I sat in the garden with Cary Davies’ novel. 4pm, I was released from her magical spell. Done too soon. Done too soon.

Did I say I was a fan? OK, I’m a fan. If you don’t know her previous work, go immediately to https://www.carysdavies.net/read/ and check it out.

To be slightly more objective about what I’m raving about here, Carys Davies is the author of two award-winning short story collections, which have shown her to be the supreme craftswoman in the form, a writer’s writer. Her prose is crisp, filled with imagery that always hints deliciously of a hidden world that lurks behind the confusing veil of the visible. Twist endings that redefine the real meaning of her stories in the last few paragraphs seem to be her speciality. Both ‘The Quiet’ and ‘Miracle at Hawkes Bay’ are destined to be classics. But she produces work slowly, her previous efforts little more than pamphlets and spread over half a dozen years. Her publishers probably wondered if she’d ever muster enough words to create a novel.

Enter ‘West’, a thin offering more like a novella, but containing the bold sweep of an epic. The rich Carys Davies prose is right there from the off. In true Clint Eastwood style, our pioneering hero leaves his ranch and daughter in search of monsters thousands of miles into the wilder west. He takes up with native Indians and scatters his wealth and wits along the trail, while his daughter waits and pines, increasingly endangered by her own flowering into womanhood. She no longer has a father to protect her. Is this what it’s really about? No, of course not. This is a Carys Davies novel! Cowboys chasing monsters would be far too simple. It’s about love and loss and what people will do in search of meaning. It’s better to travel in hope, thinking great thoughts, than sit home waiting for old age and death.

I love this book. It’s too short, but I guess I can read it more than once in a long afternoon.