Kith and Kin

by Stevie Davies

Mara and Frankie are cousins and best friends, growing up in the stifling atmosphere of Swansea in the 1950s, amid a bickering yet close-knit extended family. But their passionate friendship comes under threat as they reach adolescence in the heady atmosphere of the Sixties—a decade in which the conventions of family and kinship are overturned. Years later, as Mara begins to confront the questions surrounding Frankie's death, she is drawn back into their secret past and the struggles of a generation betrayed by its own values. Stevie Davies’ last novel, The Element of Water, was longlisted for the 2004 Booker and Orange Prizes.

Genres: Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Welsh born Stevie Davies is a novelist, literary critic, biographer and historian. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the Academi Gymreig and is Director of Creative Writing at the University of Wales, Swansea.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 stars
Davies is one of my favourite authors and although this is not her strongest it is still very good. It is about three interlinked families living in South Wales, starting in the 1950s and focusing on the 1960s with a few sections in the early 1990s. The real focus is on the nature of families and their secrets, but also on the hippies of the late 60s and the lifestyles and attitudes they represented. The two main protagonists are cousins Mara and Frankie and their experience of the hippies, the interface of radicalism, mysticism and women still making the tea and doing the cooking.
“We were two groups of people: the old-fashioned Swansea lefties, serious and kempt young men with low side-partings and open-neck shirts, chiefly students, and the long-haired dropouts of no particular denomination or age groups; people who came and went without warning, charismatics or lost souls, the unemployed and the artistic. Oddballs. Prophets. What my parents called, on a frightened reflex, gypsies, riffraff, vagrants, scum. They drifted between towns and festivals, dossing and playing for their supper. To me they had a scary glamour, being older than ourselves and privilege-free. They travelled the fabled dark side of the road.”
There is a tragedy at the centre of the novel and there are two contrasting male characters, both flawed in their own ways. They illustrate how men adapted to the new thoughts and ideas and still managed to have their cake and eat it. The rites of passage and coming of age here leave scars that last and the hippie myth and idyll is mercilessly examined and dissected. The counterculture turns out to be dystopian, especially for the women.
The novel is also an analysis of family life and there are casualties in all the generations. As always Davies writes beautifully and the novel is compelling.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel filled with some really beautiful pieces of description, extremely clever imagery, and an evocative portrayal of a tangle of family relationships. The very intensity of this tangle means that Davies can never quite unravel it completely, and the power of hindsight only answers as many questions as it asks. Davies's parallel time frames are tied together by the poignant phantom pain metaphor, which manifests itself as Mara's employment and Mara's grief, as she seeks to comes to terms with the events of her past.

I do wish that some questions had been answered more fully, but I suppose that the gentle distance left between the reader and the novel reflects Davies's gentle narration.

Remarkable.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three central characters are cousins in an ordinary family- with aunts and uncles who are ordinarily recognisable.
At puberty in the 1960s all of the excesses of the 1960s are explored- and the outcomes are far removed from the ordinary roots of the characters.
There is time hopping to the now to illustrate how much baggage had been carried through...
I good story, well written ..

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give this book a 3.5 or 4. I enjoyed reading the story set in my hometown of Swansea. The plot lines and characters are strong and engaging. My only complaint is that it did drag for me a bit towards the end when I thought there was too much about the hippy commune. Also, although it is very well written it is a bit verbose in places.

[Alison · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was my "set where I'm going on holiday" book. I started it with high hopes but somehow didn't really get into it. I didn't particularly like the characters and was glad to get to the end. Shame.

[Sara]

04 long list-orange prize