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The Tower
In seven prose pieces, this collection depicts the breakdown of human relationships among Anglesey characters who live in the shadow of a tower that throws its shadow over them.
150 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2003
136 people want to read
About the author
Tristan Hughes
11 books17 followersTristan Hughes was born in Atikokan, Ontario, and brought up on the Welsh island of Ynys Môn. He has a PhD in literature from King’s College, Cambridge, and has taught American literature in Cambridge, Taiwan, Wales and Germany. He won the Rhys Davies Short Story Award in 2002, and his first two novels, The Tower and Send My Cold Bones Home, were highly praised in the U.K. Revenant is his third novel.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 27, 2018
Esgob Mawr! What can I say? Tristan Hughes has crafted such telling short stories in the Tower collection. Took me back to Yny Môn, stirring long forgotten memories of my island home, of the coast, and of the people. For me there was a feeling of hiraeth pervading each story. The author captures not only the feelings of his vivid characters but also of the land and sea itself. The Tower, originally a working windmill, is central to each tale, and although I found all compelling, the stories which affected me most deeply were: Of Rocks and Stones; The Importance of Being Elsewhere; and Persistence.
March 19, 2025
I bought this book many years ago on the recommendation of Niall Griffiths after I’d just read Sheepshagger. I bought several of his recommendations on the same day, which partly explains why this remained on my shelves unread until now.
Another part of the explanation is that I didn’t know what to make of it. Was it a novel, short stories, essays or, as one description stated, prose pieces?
It doesn’t say anywhere on the cover or inside what the different sections represent. The only way to find out is to read them all.
And now, having read them, I can say that they are short stories in which some of the characters and buildings in each story re-appear in others and are shown from different perspectives. The narrative voice varies. Sometimes the technique is different and the focus invariably shifts. It’s rewarding to re-read them with fresh understanding for they acquire a resonance similar to that of a prose poem.
One of the unifying elements is a tower in a field in Anglesey. It used to be a windmill but it fell into disrepair and is being refurbished in “Texas Rancher style” by an upstart builder from Liverpool called Derrick Giles (nicknamed Derrick Dallas by the locals).
Sais, we are told in a glossary that you only discover as you turn the last page, is a Welsh word that means English Person.
The speaker is the nain [north Wales: grandmother] of the narrator of the first story, God’s Breath, which refers to the wind that powered the windmill. You’ll notice that her words are punctuated with both a colon and a semi-colon in a single sentence. This kind of literary sophistication comes instinctively to Tristan Hughes and he can’t disguise his vast vocabulary and well-read credentials even when he drops into the working-class stream of consciousness of a character gathering magic mushrooms so he can lose consciousness altogether, or at least distance himself from it.
His allusions range from Homer’s Odyssey through the Book of Job to Gulliver’s Travels and his humour can sometimes be ponderous and verbose, particularly in the first story. In a later story, Of Rocks and Stones, the local vicar lacks confidence in his style as he tries to write a letter to his brother in Florida but it’s an awkwardness he seems to share with the author. I’m not sure if the repetition of the word ‘today’ in the first sentence is deliberate.
At its best, Hughes’s prose is simple, lyrical and elegiac, celebrating the island’s rugged natural beauty without overlooking the social challenges faced by its inhabitants.
Throughout this collection, the natural world — its beauty and harshness — reflects the emotional lives of the characters, grounding their personal struggles in the broader rhythms of the land and sea. By placing the lives of ordinary people against the backdrop of Anglesey’s rugged landscape, Hughes continues the Welsh literary tradition that celebrates the resilience of its people while confronting the challenges of life in a changing world.
I’m conscious that this is Hughes’s first published book and it has taken me over twenty years to get around to reading it. In the meantime he’s been getting on with his career as a novelist.
Though The Tower displays moments of rawness typical of a debut work, it also lays the foundation of books such as Revenant and Hummingbird. Even in its early form, Hughes’s voice is distinct and compelling, marking him as a writer of considerable power and tempting me to explore those more mature works.
Another part of the explanation is that I didn’t know what to make of it. Was it a novel, short stories, essays or, as one description stated, prose pieces?
It doesn’t say anywhere on the cover or inside what the different sections represent. The only way to find out is to read them all.
And now, having read them, I can say that they are short stories in which some of the characters and buildings in each story re-appear in others and are shown from different perspectives. The narrative voice varies. Sometimes the technique is different and the focus invariably shifts. It’s rewarding to re-read them with fresh understanding for they acquire a resonance similar to that of a prose poem.
One of the unifying elements is a tower in a field in Anglesey. It used to be a windmill but it fell into disrepair and is being refurbished in “Texas Rancher style” by an upstart builder from Liverpool called Derrick Giles (nicknamed Derrick Dallas by the locals).
“These Sais moneybags, you know, they come here so they can play at being lord of the bloody manor; that’s what they want to be: the lord of all they survey.”
Sais, we are told in a glossary that you only discover as you turn the last page, is a Welsh word that means English Person.
The speaker is the nain [north Wales: grandmother] of the narrator of the first story, God’s Breath, which refers to the wind that powered the windmill. You’ll notice that her words are punctuated with both a colon and a semi-colon in a single sentence. This kind of literary sophistication comes instinctively to Tristan Hughes and he can’t disguise his vast vocabulary and well-read credentials even when he drops into the working-class stream of consciousness of a character gathering magic mushrooms so he can lose consciousness altogether, or at least distance himself from it.
Through the windows of the Bulkely Hotel, whose terrace looked out on the water, he could see people in the bar, soundlessly talking and laughing, encased behind glass as if they were an exhibit in a museum, mute and sealed away; they seemed inconceivably remote, as far away as memory. There were times when he wished he could get as far away from his own life, that he could look at it through windows. But what magic could take him that far?
His allusions range from Homer’s Odyssey through the Book of Job to Gulliver’s Travels and his humour can sometimes be ponderous and verbose, particularly in the first story. In a later story, Of Rocks and Stones, the local vicar lacks confidence in his style as he tries to write a letter to his brother in Florida but it’s an awkwardness he seems to share with the author. I’m not sure if the repetition of the word ‘today’ in the first sentence is deliberate.
Today’s letter today had begun quite gloomily — how could he help it with half the Irish Sea cascading down his drain pipes and the rest, apparently, sweeping in from the grey horizon — in a style he feared was a bit stilted and self-indulgent (his brother had little time for flowery prose, he had always preferred bold, uncluttered lines that did not deviate as they passed over the terrain beneath: longitudes, latitudes).
At its best, Hughes’s prose is simple, lyrical and elegiac, celebrating the island’s rugged natural beauty without overlooking the social challenges faced by its inhabitants.
Listening to Jack she had thought how every story was really an elegy, how they were populated with dead people, and took place in ruined houses, and happened in dead times. Outside, the landscape was just a huge, patterned graveyard, each field a plot, each wall a gravestone, each cluster of trees a forgotten bouquet of flowers. She had thought about Skinner’s map, and how maps were just a story about the ground beneath, an epitaph written in cold, mute lines. Jack had only asked her one question, her own question repeated: why was she here. And she knew she didn’t have an answer and she knew she didn’t want to keep not having one. And more than anything else she wanted to go home.
Throughout this collection, the natural world — its beauty and harshness — reflects the emotional lives of the characters, grounding their personal struggles in the broader rhythms of the land and sea. By placing the lives of ordinary people against the backdrop of Anglesey’s rugged landscape, Hughes continues the Welsh literary tradition that celebrates the resilience of its people while confronting the challenges of life in a changing world.
I’m conscious that this is Hughes’s first published book and it has taken me over twenty years to get around to reading it. In the meantime he’s been getting on with his career as a novelist.
Though The Tower displays moments of rawness typical of a debut work, it also lays the foundation of books such as Revenant and Hummingbird. Even in its early form, Hughes’s voice is distinct and compelling, marking him as a writer of considerable power and tempting me to explore those more mature works.
June 18, 2025
Not from the area where Mr Hughes is writing but the emotional depth in these seven short pieces left me breathless and has made me look at my own short stories / pieces (I am a poet with numerous collections and two full length novels) in a very different way.
Best book I've read in ages honestly and I can honestly admit I got this for a £1 on a punt in a charity book.
Definately will be getting more of his books.
Best book I've read in ages honestly and I can honestly admit I got this for a £1 on a punt in a charity book.
Definately will be getting more of his books.
February 28, 2011
Tristan Hughes teaches at my university, and taught my housemate last semester. She's very enthusiastic about him, despite not having read any of his work, so I thought I'd give it a go -- it's in the library, after all, so no problem if it isn't for me.
It isn't for me, really, I don't think, but there was still stuff to enjoy there. Funny descriptions, and sometimes very apt descriptions, and scenes that evoked a lot of response. The book is made up of vignettes, most regretful, concerning people's lives in a particular local area, connected to each other by a shared history and geography.
The ones that got to me most were the ones about a man going blind and a boy whose father was suffering from PTSD in the wake of fighting in the war. The man who is going blind puts so much importance on what he's done in his life, what he's achieved, and so when he's going blind, he thinks about blinding himself on purpose, before his vision is completely gone...
Was he supposed to just wait while it did this, while it took what was left, to sit helpless while it worked on him. The silver so smooth in his hand -- it was in his hands, he could get rid of it now once and for all. Derrick imagined sitting in a darkness that he had made, and that would be forever his own.
And then the description of the boy's father's PTSD:
It was like some crazed and dementedly reductive dramatist who slashed up men's scripts and burned down their stages and left them with one scene, one act, one single passage, that they were cursed to play out again and again and forever.
I really enjoyed some of these images, even if the stories themselves were not what I'd seek out for fun.
It isn't for me, really, I don't think, but there was still stuff to enjoy there. Funny descriptions, and sometimes very apt descriptions, and scenes that evoked a lot of response. The book is made up of vignettes, most regretful, concerning people's lives in a particular local area, connected to each other by a shared history and geography.
The ones that got to me most were the ones about a man going blind and a boy whose father was suffering from PTSD in the wake of fighting in the war. The man who is going blind puts so much importance on what he's done in his life, what he's achieved, and so when he's going blind, he thinks about blinding himself on purpose, before his vision is completely gone...
Was he supposed to just wait while it did this, while it took what was left, to sit helpless while it worked on him. The silver so smooth in his hand -- it was in his hands, he could get rid of it now once and for all. Derrick imagined sitting in a darkness that he had made, and that would be forever his own.
And then the description of the boy's father's PTSD:
It was like some crazed and dementedly reductive dramatist who slashed up men's scripts and burned down their stages and left them with one scene, one act, one single passage, that they were cursed to play out again and again and forever.
I really enjoyed some of these images, even if the stories themselves were not what I'd seek out for fun.
September 9, 2008
A series of loosely connected stories set on the Welsh island of Ynys Mon. It deals with themes that have been of much relevance to me lately, and it does so in a great, misty and rainy and rocky way. Can you really return home after being away for too long, can you really cut off your roots and still grow, can you rediscover your roots after having been replanted, and is travelling all around the world really worth losing connection with the soil that has been forming you throughout your life. In short, we all know that to go "there and back again" is not really possible, is it.
June 12, 2016
there were 2 (or 3?) chapters that I loved and the descriptions were beautiful. it was too over the place for me
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews