What do you think?
Rate this book
Of Talons and Teeth
An historical novel set in Wales before the Industrial Revolution, as human love tries to flower amidst squalor and serfdom.
Wales, a mining village, pre-industrial revolution. A world of serfdom and squalor, its inhabitants oppressed by both Chapel conformist impulses and the predations of a new kind of capitalism being born.
Sion, a metalworker, strikes up an illicit relationship with Katherine, the wife of the mineowner's personal dogsbody. And so begins the struggle of non-transactional and non-exploitative human love to be recognised in a place bent on the destruction and negation of that very thing.
A mix of political anger, historical excavation, Celtic mysticism, praise of the human impulse to love and rage at avarice and exploitation, Of Talons and Teeth seeks to explore that moment when human beings and the natural beauties around them were turned into mere chattels; when Mammon became the only god worth worshipping.
Wales, a mining village, pre-industrial revolution. A world of serfdom and squalor, its inhabitants oppressed by both Chapel conformist impulses and the predations of a new kind of capitalism being born.
Sion, a metalworker, strikes up an illicit relationship with Katherine, the wife of the mineowner's personal dogsbody. And so begins the struggle of non-transactional and non-exploitative human love to be recognised in a place bent on the destruction and negation of that very thing.
A mix of political anger, historical excavation, Celtic mysticism, praise of the human impulse to love and rage at avarice and exploitation, Of Talons and Teeth seeks to explore that moment when human beings and the natural beauties around them were turned into mere chattels; when Mammon became the only god worth worshipping.
- GenresFiction
180 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 5, 2023
6 people are currently reading
104 people want to read
About the author
Niall Griffiths
33 books100 followersNiall Griffiths was born in Liverpool to a Welsh/Irish/Romany lineage. He’s been a labourer, a barman, a server of fish and chips, a burglar, a farmhand, a tree feller, a factory worker and many other things too tedious to relate. Now, he’s a full-time writer, living at the foot of a mountain in mid-Wales, with seven novels published, several works of non-fiction and more short stories and radio plays and travel pieces and reviews than he cares to, or possibly even can, count. His fourth novel, Stump, won the Wales Book of the Year Award. A film adaptation of his third novel, Kelly+Victor, won a BAFTA. He’s now working on the screenplay for his sixth, Wreckage. His latest novel is Broken Ghost.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 23, 2024
3.5 stars
I am hoping that writing this review will decide whether to round up or down. I did not like the ending. It was certainly in the bleak spirit of the book but I wanted Sion, Catherine, and Ianto to have a chance at a better life together.
Bleak and depressing is the best description for the atmosphere created by the author in this book. "Sir" Herbert controls the area and has concern only for himself. The miners make a pittance and spend it on booze and women. Catherine is married to Lloyd who is a gardener for Sir Herbert but also does other jobs for him. The priest likes to visit the women. Catherine runs the bar. Sion is the "vulcan," i.e., the blacksmith. Catherine is trying to teach him to read English; he prefers the native tongue.
Interwoven with the story are descriptions of life and nature and, in italics, what's going on in Sion's head. We see a bond between Sion and Ianto and between Sion and Catherine. Lloyd does whatever Sir Herbert wants, but in the end it does not help.
OK. I'm rounding down.
I am hoping that writing this review will decide whether to round up or down. I did not like the ending. It was certainly in the bleak spirit of the book but I wanted Sion, Catherine, and Ianto to have a chance at a better life together.
Bleak and depressing is the best description for the atmosphere created by the author in this book. "Sir" Herbert controls the area and has concern only for himself. The miners make a pittance and spend it on booze and women. Catherine is married to Lloyd who is a gardener for Sir Herbert but also does other jobs for him. The priest likes to visit the women. Catherine runs the bar. Sion is the "vulcan," i.e., the blacksmith. Catherine is trying to teach him to read English; he prefers the native tongue.
Interwoven with the story are descriptions of life and nature and, in italics, what's going on in Sion's head. We see a bond between Sion and Ianto and between Sion and Catherine. Lloyd does whatever Sir Herbert wants, but in the end it does not help.
OK. I'm rounding down.
Read
December 15, 2023A historical love story about oppression and the dawn of an ominous new technological era (very relevant today with ai), brought to life with musical prose. Every sentence is full of life, each character feels real - I already miss them. One of the best books of 2023, and one I'll be reading again and again in the new year. A masterpiece.
March 11, 2025
Absolutely foul, but also at times tender. Funny throughout, Of Talons and Teeth is a damning indictment of the emergence of the capitalist system. I was unsurprised to read that Griffiths holds up Hubert Selby Jr as one of his favourite authors, as the filth and the fury in Of Talons and Teeth reminded me very much of the New York Author. Features perhaps the most unusual use of language you'll read this year.
Read
January 1, 2026Dark
July 11, 2024
I loved this book. I agree with the message that any economic system that makes of human labor and nature commodities to be exploited is evil and those that profit from this system are corrupt or will be corrupted by it. I love the prose; Niall Griffiths has a gift for language and I will read anything he writes. Like all of Niall’s books, some passages are raw, but so beautifully written; I have a visceral reaction to the depictions of the worst of humanity in some passages and other passages I read 2,3, or 4 times for the sublime writing and the wisdom.
Trangressive fiction is a difficult genre, it’s easy to create one dimensional caricatures using gratuitously foul language, but it takes a gifted writer to create characters who exists on the periphery of society: addicts, petty criminals, even those committing gruesome murders, without depriving those characters of their humanity. Niall Griffiths is one such writer.
As long as greed and Capitalism are the engine of commerce this book will remain timely.
Highly recommended.
Trangressive fiction is a difficult genre, it’s easy to create one dimensional caricatures using gratuitously foul language, but it takes a gifted writer to create characters who exists on the periphery of society: addicts, petty criminals, even those committing gruesome murders, without depriving those characters of their humanity. Niall Griffiths is one such writer.
As long as greed and Capitalism are the engine of commerce this book will remain timely.
Highly recommended.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews