Το Μερίδιο Της Γης

by Daniel Wiles, Έφη Τσιρώνη (Translator)

1872, Αγγλία.
Ο Μάικλ είναι ανθρακωρύχος. Βγάζει το ψωμί του κατεβαίνοντας κάθε μέρα στα έγκατα της γης στη "Μαύρη Χώρα", την περιοχή των ανθρακωρυχείων στην κεντρική Αγγλία. Αλλά αυτή δεν είναι ζωή γι' ανθρώπους.
Ο Μάικλ κάνει τα αδύνατα δυνατά, δουλεύει διπλή βάρδια για να μπορέσει ο γιος του ο Λουκ να πάει σχολείο, να γλιτώσει από αυτή τη μοίρα.
Ώσπου μια μέρα, κάτω στις στοές, βρίσκει μια φλέβα χρυσού. Αν βγάλει το χρυσάφι από εκεί μέσα, θα σωθεί κι ο ίδιος και το παιδί του.
Αλλά ο Κέιν, με τον οποίο δουλεύουν πλάι πλάι στη στοά, έχει άλλα σχέδια...

Ένα συγκλονιστικό μυθιστόρημα για το απόγειο της Βιομηχανικής Επανάστασης και τις ζωές που θυσιάστηκαν για να συμβεί.

Μια δυνατή, εντυπωσιακή φωνή που συμπεριλήφθηκε από τον Observer στους δέκα καλύτερους νέους συγγραφείς της Βρετανίας για το 2022.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical, British Literature

232 pages, Paperback

First published February 3, 2022

Reviews

[Tom Mooney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-read ahead of interviewing the author next week and I wholeheartedly agree with my earlier self...


An early contender for book of the year.

Michael is pushing himself harder and harder down the mine to make sure his son, Luke, goes to school. Because this is no life for a man. Soot in your lungs, the heat, the dirt, the constant fear of collapse. The pitiful pay. No. Luke deserves more.

But things are starting to slip away from Michael. Then, something glistens at the thwack of his pickaxe. Gold.

This is a beautiful novel, hewn in gnarled prose from the pen of a stunning new talent in British writing. There is more than a passing resemblance in style to the work of Benjamin Myers and it's packed with subtly infused social history, much like Claire Keegan does. I absolutely loved it, it's exactly my kind of book.

[Katerina Koltsida · Rating 4 out of 5]

Τα χτυπήματα της αξίνας στα τοιχώματα του ανθρακορυχείου χτυπούν κατευθείαν στην ψυχή μας.
Ένα βιβλίο που έρχεται καταλυτικά να μας θυμίσει τις απάνθρωπες συνθήκες ζωής της εργατικής τάξης της Βιομηχανικής Επανάσταση.
Διχως να εξαναγκάζει το συναίσθημα και χωρίς εξάρσεις, ο συγγραφέας καταφέρνει να μας μεταφέρει στην καρδιά της εποχής και της κατάστασης, με μια γραφή ιδιαίτερη μα ρέουσα. Και μολονότι ο Wiles ερεύνησε σε βάθος τα αρχεία της περιόδου το αποτέλεσμα δεν είναι επ ουδενί εργαστηριακό, αλλά οπωσδήποτε λογοτεχνικό, παρά τη λιτότητα που χαρακτηρίζει την πενα του.
Κιαν τούτο είναι το πρώτο του βιβλίο, περιμένουμε πολλά από τον συγγραφέα

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seriously effing brilliant. Loved it!

[Andy Weston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wiles received a Booker Prize Fountaion Scholarship to fund the writing of this book, and it was clearly money well spent. This is an outstanding debut from what is an exciting new British writer.
It is set in the heart of the Industrial Revolution, in 1872 in a small Black Country village where the landscape and social cohesion are being savagely torn apart by its three collieries. Among those miners, many of them young children, working in the shocking conditions is Michael Cash. He has taken a second job in order to send his six year old son to school. Having worked himself in the mine while still a boy, he is determined that this son won’t suffer the same fate. But when taking that second job loses him his first, he feels his cautious plan slipping through his fingers.
That’s enough of the plot to seduce any potential readers. To say any more would spoil the experience, and many reviewers give too much away.
Suffice to say that the book has a propulsive plot moving rapidly to a rhythmic beat. It is robust fiction that is deservedly compared to the likes of The Gallows Pole; indeed Benjamin Myers was full of praise in his review for The Guardian. However, this is very much it’s own thing. It has more of an experimental style enriched by its use of the speech and accent of the Black Country, not only in the dialogue, but across the whole of the piece. This use of language encapsulates directness, generosity and a kind of classless intimacy.
Behind a seemingly perpetual night, mines and furnaces materialising out of the smog, Wiles reminds us that this is part of the ancient of Mercia, and it’s King, Offa.
This was a very powerful and memorable reading experience. That use of language slowing my reading to a crawl, for which I was very grateful in a such a short work.

Here’s a clip as Michael who has made his way on foot and by cart and canal arrives in Dudley..

Further south atop a hill sat the castle. Mostly destroyed and derelict. It’s stone foundations reaching up from the blackness like the carcass of some giant prehistoric mammal. Trees sideclung. To the west giant brick kilns bloomed from the earth like permanent weeds. And from them limesmoke. All this a picture of what looked to him like nothing he had ever seen before. A land eating itself like a dog chewing its leg off to escape a snare.

Hopefully this will be a contender for awards. It deserves recognition. I’m sure it will figure as one of my best of the year.

[Matthew Bishop · Rating 5 out of 5]

The chaps at my favourite book shop have coined a phrase for this style of literature, ‘Hedgerow Noir’, and what a great description - dark stories that are based within the rough and gritty landscapes across the country. (Elmet, Gallows Pole)

Based in the Black Country, written largely in dialect, this story follows a man chasing a dream to better his sons future, he doesn’t want him to end up in the mines like he did. In pursuit of his dream he looses sight of reality, and goes on an adventure with a catastrophic ending. I didn’t see it coming! ‘Hedgerow Noir’ is definitely my thing.

This book is well worth a read.

[Oscar · Rating 2 out of 5]

About half way through I had to ask myself “why am I really not enjoying this book?” So I made some notes, and here’s what I’ve got:
First off, I want someone to sit me down and explain what a novel gains from losing its speech marks. Would it really have hurt the story to know when someone is talking? And while I’m here, I liked the phonetic dialogue but having random words of narration spelt phonetically was just distracting.
It’s a little nitpicky but when I’m having to come out of the story to parse a sentence every paragraph it begins to grate.
I have more nitpicks but let’s get to the main problem with the book for me. The characters are just so bland. They begin and end the story as stock characters. The seen-it-all miner who wants to do right by his son; the put upon step mother. They don’t change at all. I finished the book and couldn’t tell you a single thing about the personality of the son Luke who is meant to be the emotional driving force of the story. As for Michael, if you ignore his son and ask what kind of person he is as an individual, you’re left with Grizzled Miner #781. He never has any opinions, any personality traits other than grim determination. We spend the whole book with him and by the end I just did not care whether he succeeded or failed.
I think the dialogue is partly to blame. It’s hard to get a feel for who the characters are through their words when they all speak in the same phonetic language.
The good and bad both read the same.
If I cared about the characters and their struggles I could overlook the rest of my nitpicks, but I didn’t, so here they are:
There’s a good amount of clichéd lines. I’m usually not one to harp on stock phrases but they really stick out when the book is so stylish in places. There was a real split: descriptive scenes of place were fantastic, action/dialogue scenes were bland and peppered with clichés. Some examples include: “tight as a drum”, “jumped out of his skin” and “blind drunk”.
The ending. Why does Michael turn back after going so far to find Cain? It just seemed a contrived way to get a little sightseeing tour of despair. Then the characters keep going on about how his pride will kill him, but he swallowed his pride, he turned back, so what are they on about?
On said journey to find Cain, there had to be a better way to explore Michael’s internal conflict than having a smattering of rhetorical questions every now and then. We couldn’t have some of them borne out in dialogue, letting us view Michael from the outside and make our own judgements?
On the subject of judgement, the narration is doing a lot of it for the reader. It stuck out when it refers to Cain at one point as “the bastard”. Up until that point I had thought of him as torn between keeping his word and getting the money he needed, but no I guess he was just the bastard. It makes me think this book had originally been in first person, which would make sense, but I guess it didn’t gel so well with the decision to make so much of it phonetic.

And that’s what I’ve got to answer my question of why I didn’t enjoy the book. It is worth a read if only because it’s short and teaches you a little something about the conditions of the mines in the 1870’s, but it isn’t the meditative emotional rollercoaster it thinks it is.

[Charlotte_qtbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m French and I’ve bought this book in London because a bookseller recommended it to me. He probably overestimated my english level, considering the amount of slang there is in this book. But I must say I really loved reading it. I’m quite surprised by the quantity of things I understood to be honest. And I’ve been shaken by this reading. It’s a really sad story, that I would definitely recommend to anyone interested in historic fictions. I feel like I’ve learned a lot from this book. I didn’t even know what was Mercia before starting it, and it taught me a lot of information about poor people in the 19th. Loved it.

[Aaron Myles · Rating 5 out of 5]

An atmospheric historical debut full of intense dialogue and immersive - yet spare - descriptions. Smatterings of Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner and Cynan Jones stylistically, complete with all three's tendency to sit you uncomfortably on the precipice of violence.

Love the setting; don't think I've come across a novel about 19th century miners before. Oh and the ending is

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well me heart is in several pieces now. What a debut as well!

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a brilliant book. I did not see the twist at the end of the book coming. Lovely dedication.

[Ζωή Τσούρα · Rating 4 out of 5]

Η Μερκία έδωσε απλόχερα την πρώτη ύλη της προόδου, το καύσιμο που κινούσε τρένα και πλοία, έθετε σε λειτουργία τις μηχανές στα εργοστάσια και ζέσταινε σπίτια. Είδε τις παλιές πόλεις της να γιγαντώνονται, κι άλλες, καινούριες, να γεννιούνται γύρω από τα ανθρακωρυχεία και τα εργοστάσια. Και έγινε το θέατρο μιας χωρίς προηγούμενο εκμετάλλευσης ανθρώπου από άνθρωπο και μιας πρωτοφανούς οικολογικής καταστροφής. (Απόσπασμα από το Σημείωμα της Ελληνικής Έκδοσης)

Ένα βιβλίο που με πήγε πίσω στα παιδικά μου χρόνια, όταν διαβάζαμε πώς δενότανε τ' ατσάλι, πώς ζητιάνευαν τα παιδιά στους δρόμους, πώς πέθαιναν οι άνθρωποι σωρηδόν από τις αρρώστιες. Ασήμαντοι, αναλώσιμοι, γρανάζια. Ένα βιβλίο βουτηγμένο στην καρβουνόσκονη των ανθρακωρυχείων, πνιγμένο στ��ν μαύρο βήχα και στον καπνό από τις τσιμινιέρες, σε βάζει σε πνιγηρές στοές, ασφυκτικά λατομεία, υγρά χαμόσπιτα. Παίζει με τις ελπίδες σου όπως η ζωή παίζει με αυτές των εργατών στις σελίδες. Εύκολο να το διαβάσεις, γιατί διατηρεί μία απλότητα στη γραφή και μία ειλικρίνεια χωρίς στρογγυλέματα, δύσκολο να το χωνέψεις. Προς γνώση, μνήμη, κι επαγρύπνηση. Βασισμένο σε αληθινά γεγονότα, χτισμένο γύρω από το εργατικό ατύχημα στο ανθρακωρυχείο Πέλσαλ Χολ, στη Μ. Βρετανία, στις 14 Νοεμβρίου 1872.

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grim but beautiful vision of a Black Country miner trapped in an industrialised hellscape, desperate that his son will not follow him into the pits.

[Omer · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Two boys emerged from a small air hole. They looked unhuman, like some blind, bald rodents unearthing themselves in search of scraps of candlelight."

It’s sentences like this that make a story about miners in 1870’s Black Country – something I know nothing about – feel vivid and engrossing. This book was eye opening to me, educational without feeling like a history lesson, because the story was full of suspense.

I love the fact that I could read an entire story without having to slog through unnecessary, easily cut scenes or descriptions. There are so many popular, award-winning books out there that try to overwhelm you with an insane amount of descriptions and scenes that do nothing for the story, just for the sake of being a “serious long novel”. But here the author must have felt no need to vomit a thesaurus on the keyboard. The prose almost sounds like poetry: it has flow to it that is precise and razor sharp, a cadence that begs to be read aloud. It's clear that every word has been meticulously chosen, as it should be in a relatively short book. There are no bells and whistles here, nothing that tries to make the story more than it is: the writing style is satisfyingly restrained, and lets the story do the work.

Ironically enough, my favorite sentences were actually descriptive ones that had no verb, like:

"Towards the south a red glowing skyline."

“Inside the pub a commotion."

"He crossed the cornfields. A wide white blanket."

"The slow cackling of chains."

The dialect was a bit hard for me to read, as someone who isn't British. But it adds something to the book, a sense of time and place and authenticity, that I feel would've been lost otherwise.

All in all, I found this a gripping and tightly plotted (and worded) novel with a standout ending.

[Julia Richards]

dreadful miserable
Very badly researched
Very poor characters
Badly written
The Cain character states he is from east Wales, yet his dialect does not indicate this. This this was the time of the Welsh/gold rush why would someone from Gwent move to Mercia when the coal rush was a few miles away, no one from Wales would identify themselves even in the 1800s as being from east Wales.
THE PURPORTED GOLD DISCOVERY IS VERY UNLIKLY AND SEEMS TO ACTUALLY BE FOOLS GOLD GIVEN THE DISCRIPTION [WHICH WAS POOR]
Candles underground were frowned upon since the introduction of the Davey lamp and in any event the widespread use was tallow at that date
Children under 10 and women/girls were banned from working underground since 1842 by the 1870s this was enforced quite strictly
Life is too short for poor books

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an oddball of a novel told with a stylized and dialect heavy prose, while I can see how this may turn some readers away from the novel, there are some beautiful sentences nestled within the interesting writing style.

Despite its rather slim size, this is a book that packs a punch. It's a bleak and tragic tale, full of struggle and turmoil. There really isn't one single moment of happiness to be found here. Strewn across these pages is nothing but regret, and suffering.

My only real complaint with this book is that I wish it was just a touch longer. I just wanted a bit more time to fully connect with the main character.

[Ivan Monckton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my, what a stunning novel! This tale of a few days in the life of an 1870s miner in the Black Country is so much more enlightening about the reality of working class Life inVictorian industrial Britain than anything you were taught at school or read in social or political history books. The attention to detail is impressive and the the vernacular accent is spot on, even if that probably makes for some difficult reading for those not born and raised in the area.
I really can’t recommend this book highly enough, and am already looking forward with anticipation to the author’s future efforts.

[LindaJ^ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is the story of a coal miner - Michael Cash - in the late 1800's. Coal miners had it bad wherever they were located. Think of Tennesse Ernie Ford's song Owe My Sole to the Company Store. and the lyrics: "16 ton and what do I get? another day older and deeper in debt." Michael's worked in the mine just about all of his live, and he's of 27 now. He doesn't want his son to share his fate so he's determined to make extra money. He doesn't want his second wife (first died, and while we are not told how, suspect it was at the time of the birth of son Luke) Jane, who has a bum leg from an accident, to work. But he wants his son to go to school and stay out of the mine. Going to school takes money though - it is not free or required.

Hence the story is bleak and likely paints a realistic picture of the lot of a coalminer of the time. According to a note at the end, it is, in part, based on a real life incident at a mine. The dialogue is written in what I assume is an approximation of how folks of the social status of a coal miner would speak. I am not a fan of having to read out loud to figure out what is being said. The characters are not particularly well-developed. The story is sad and realistic.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was another Book Club read. It's an odd one and I felt it was was missing so much for me.

My dad was a miner and fools' gold is quite common but actual gold isn't and I would have expected a miner to know this.

The father just really annoyed me. He wanted a better life for his child, but due to his actions he ended up condemning him to the same life. It just felt futile. His poor wife - she wanted to work to help, and let's face it all the other wives would have been working and not sat at home, and when she did find some work he simply wanted to catch her out. And that chase after the guy was pointless too.

What the book did do though was give a real sense of the hard life at this period in time.

Oh and I almost forgot - there was just too much written in the dialect. I had to keep re-reading bits to make sense of it and I've lived and worked in the Midlands so understand the dialect and the local works really weel.

[Linda Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have read a couple of books that delve into the realities and condemned harshness of the coal miners life in that time; though I would have thought that someone who’d lived this life after generations before him had , would have understood the plight of fools Gold.
I found the main protagonist quite selfish chasing that rainbow without a thought to the consequences on his own son and wife. Maybe that was the irony.. the madness of being stuck in that life.
I didn’t particularly care for the inconsistent use of language and the lack of punctuation. I had to re read so much to get the gist of who was saying what to whom. I’ve read books before that included inflections of colloquial speech and have found it educational and enjoyable, but this didn’t work for me. Having said that, there were some powerful sentences that have stayed with me and the writer has been successful interpreting the ‘fools errand’.
A short and engaging read.

[George K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Πω, πω, τι μαυρίλα ήταν αυτή; Μαύρο σαν το κάρβουνο βρήκα τούτο το βιβλίο, αρκετά καταθλιπτικό ως προς τα σκηνικά και την ατμόσφαιρα και τρόπον τινά κλειστοφοβικό (λογικό θα μου πείτε, εξαιτίας και των ορυχείων), σίγουρα σαν ανάγνωσμα δεν είναι από αυτά που πιάνεις για να περάσεις ευχάριστα την ώρα σου. Θα μου πεις, γιατί να το διαβάσει κανείς; Για να σου μαυρίσει την ψυχή; Ε, λοιπόν, γιατί πολύ απλά είναι δυνατό, σαν γροθιά στο στομάχι, κάργα ατμοσφαιρικό, αρκετά καθηλωτικό λόγω συγγραφικού στιλ και πλοκής, αφόρητα ρεαλιστικό, ενώ επίσης αναδεικνύει με τον πλέον γλαφυρό τρόπο τη βιομηχανική επανάσταση και τις ζωές που χάθηκαν για να συμβεί. Σίγουρα πολύ ενδιαφέρον και δυνατό συγγραφικό ντεμπούτο, με τη γραφή από μόνη της να δημιουργεί ποικίλα συναισθήματα στον αναγνώστη και την πλοκή να διαθέτει νεύρο και αρκετές στιγμές έντασης. Ουσιαστικά για λεπτομέρειες δεν τσιμπάει πέμπτο αστεράκι από μένα.

[Emma Dickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Having deep-rooted ancestry in the coal mining life of Mercia, I was instantly attracted to this short novel that I found on a holiday in Bath. Michael is a miner in the Black Country, living with his wife and son in a small house, living hand to mouth, coughing up black phlegm every day and generally being exhausted by the grueling work.

When he and a colleague, Cain, strike gold in their section, they bundle it away and vow to split it between them, but Cain is just as desperate as Michael to change his life and does something drastic in order to obtain the gold for himself.

To think my ancestors went through similar to get by in life makes me feel very humble towards them. I knew nothing previously about the mining disaster of Pelsall Colliery, which made the ending more of a shock and, as the novel is mostly written in Black Country dialect, which isn't too different to my old Derbyshire one, really, I soon shot through the book in a day.

[Fay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Μια ιστορία για τους ανθρακωρύχους της Βρετανίας, βασισμένη σε αληθινά γεγονότα.
Ο Μάικλ ανακαλύπτει μια φλέβα χρυσού στο ανθρακωρυχείο που εργάζεται. Μαζί με τον συνάδελφό του Κειν παίρνουν τον χρυσό με σκοπό να μοιραστούν το ποσό που θα τους δώσει το ενεχυροδανειστήριο. Ο Μάικλ θέλει τον χρυσό για ένα καλύτερο μέλλον για τον γιο του, για να μην χρειαστεί να δουλέψει στα ορυχεία και να πάει σχολειο. Ο Κέιν θέλει όλο τον χρυσό για την πάρτη του και εξαφανίζεται με αυτόν.
Ο Μάικλ αφήνει την οικογένεια του και ξεκινάει ένα ταξίδι για να τον βρει και να πάρει πίσω ότι του ανήκει.
Στο ταξίδι πολλές φορές μπαίνει σε σκέψεις αν έπραξε σωστά, που άφησε πίσω τον γιο του, αν αξίζει να συνεχίσει , πώς θα αντιμετωπίσει τον Κέιν όταν και αν τον βρει.

Δεν μου άρεσε που ειχε τόσα πολλά σχήματα λόγου, ειδικά στις περιγραφές τοπίων.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing, setting aside the dialect for the moment, is incredible. Brings to mind some amazing writers, none of which I will name to avoid corrupting anyone with subjective comparisons. So, that dialect. Intriguing inclusion, but made for a rough read throughout. I didn't love it for the dialogue bits, but I loved it much less when it was aimlessly tossed into the non-speaking narrative, as it felt less intriguing and more forced and unnatural/unnecessary. Bleak, dirty, melancholy, and mostly hopeless. Yet realistic to the lives of miners (and most anyone else performing manual labor at the time...). Not really compelling, as the tragic aspects of the novel - and its faith vs. desires struggle - were underdone and sporadic. A praiseworthy debut that bodes well for future novels, writing of this quality is rare and can carry even weakly plotted books just fine.

[Brian Doak Carlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some beautiful sentences sprinkled throughout this short novel, however the book was marred for me with the inconsistency of its use of dialect. Sometimes cropping up in the main narrative alongside straightforward English prose, in such a manner that makes you think, who’s the narrator here? Who speaks like this? If the entire book had ve been in dialect it may have made more sense, but I feel the writer wasn’t sure of his choices. The story itself was a bit too compressed, with major narrative driving events following on rather too quickly and too handily to be believable. I feel the writer will have a fine book in him, but this isn’t it yet.

[India (IndiaReadsALot) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fully invested in this book.

This book was quite far from what I would normally read. The closest I get to historical fiction is like your classic 1920's murder mystery so this was a bit out of my comfort zone but I really enjoyed it.

Wiles does a really great job of making you want to root for the main character and wish for their success. Michael is the life and soul of this book and I thought he was written very well.

I will say that the old 1870's slang was a bit of a struggle to read at first but once I got into it it read so smoothly.

[George Barnett · Rating 3 out of 5]

A generally enjoyable quick read spoilt by a few quibbles. The dialect was pretty good. As a West- Midlander myself I found it very recognisable. However why did some of it spill from the dialogue into the narrative? This was odd.
Secondly there were no egrets in the UK in the 1870s. They didn’t settle here until the late C20.
Thirdly the characters were undeveloped and sketchy.
Finally the sudden ending would have had more impact had the characters been stronger. As it was it felt like a mistake by the printers!

[Thanasis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Το δυνατό σημείο του βιβλίου είναι η περιγραφή της ζωής του και της εργασίας των Άγγλων ανθρακωρύχων στην Αγγλία του 1872. Η ιστορία είναι το αδύνατο σημείο ίσως επειδή είναι 200 σελίδες μόνο. Το τελικό αποτέλεσμα πάντως μου άρεσε. Το διάβασα με μία ανάσα.

Όπως γράφει ο συγγραφέας στον πρόλογο του, έγραψε το βιβλίο, (το πρώτο του), όταν παρακολουθούσε ένα μεταπτυχιακό πρόγραμμα δημιουργικής γραφής. Η επιρροή των μαθημάτων και των σχολίων των συμφοιτητών του είναι εμφανής στους διαλόγους και στις σκέψεις του πρωταγωνιστή ενώ στις περιγραφές της εργασίας στο ορυχείο απουσιάζουν.

[Lauren C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A historically essential read to get into the shoes of one of millions of Victorian miners. This history that is too easily forgotten about has been brought to live and in such a relevant matter, focusing on a real disaster. This gives a deep appreciation of the hardship people faced and how things can change in an instant. The dialogue being written in Black Country dialect helped set the scene even more, I loved this book! 100% recommend to anyone interested in English history, the Victorian era, working class history. I can’t wait to read more from this author

[Ισμήνη Σταυρίτη · Rating 5 out of 5]

Μια δυνατή ιστορία για μια περίοδο που καθόρισε σε μεγάλο βαθμό την ιστορία του κόσμου όπως τον γνωρίζουμε. Ένα θέμα που εδώ στην Ελλάδα δεν μας έχει απασχολήσει ιδιαιτέρα καθώς έχουμε μια τάση να βλέπουν έξω από τα στενά δικά μας σύνορα.
Πολύ σημαντικό να έχουμε μια εικόνα του κόσμου, μας βοηθά να κατανοήσουμε το σήμερα και τους λόγους που έχουμε οδηγηθεί σε όλα όσα πασχίζουμε να διορθώσουμε σε όλα τα επίπεδα του κοινωνικού γίγνεσθαι.
Ένα βιβλίο φόρος τιμής στον άνθρωπο του μόχθου που αν δούμε πίσω από τις λέξεις δεν χάνει την ελπίδα του για ένα καλύτερο αύριο 🌼🌷🌹

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

relentlessly depressing

I bought this book expecting a story about people like me, born and bred for generations in the Black Country, living and generally thriving. This book captures the dialect and some of the geography but leaves out the heart. It is a miserable tale and does not address what I needed at a time of diminishing national mental health. For heaven’s sake, cheer up.