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And I shall sleep: Down where the moon is small
valuable sought after writing style
400 pages, Paperback
First published April 30, 1970
141 people want to read
About the author
Richard Llewellyn
36 books118 followersRichard Llewellyn (real name Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd) was a British novelist.
Llewellyn was born of Welsh parents in Hendon, north London in 1906. Only after his death was it discovered that his claim that he was born in St. Davids, West Wales was false, though of course he was of Welsh blood.
Several of his novels dealt with a Welsh theme, the best-known being How Green Was My Valley (1939), which won international acclaim and was made into a classic Hollywood film. It immortalised the way of life of the South Wales Valleys coal mining communities, where Llewellyn spent a small amount of time with his grandfather. Three sequels followed.
He lived a peripatetic life, travelling widely throughout his life. Before World War II, he spent periods working in hotels, wrote a play, worked as a coal miner and produced his best known novel. During World War II, he rose to the rank of Captain in the Welsh Guards. Following the war, he worked as a journalist, covering the Nuremberg Trials, and then as a screenwriter for MGM. Late in his life, he lived in Eilat, Israel.
Protagonists who assume new identities, often because they are transplanted into foreign cultures, are a recurring element in Llewellyn's novels, including a spy adventure that extends through several volumes.
Llewellyn married twice: his first wife was Nona Sonstenby, whom he married in 1952 and divorced in 1968, and his second wife was Susan Heimann, whom he married in 1974.
Llewellyn was born of Welsh parents in Hendon, north London in 1906. Only after his death was it discovered that his claim that he was born in St. Davids, West Wales was false, though of course he was of Welsh blood.
Several of his novels dealt with a Welsh theme, the best-known being How Green Was My Valley (1939), which won international acclaim and was made into a classic Hollywood film. It immortalised the way of life of the South Wales Valleys coal mining communities, where Llewellyn spent a small amount of time with his grandfather. Three sequels followed.
He lived a peripatetic life, travelling widely throughout his life. Before World War II, he spent periods working in hotels, wrote a play, worked as a coal miner and produced his best known novel. During World War II, he rose to the rank of Captain in the Welsh Guards. Following the war, he worked as a journalist, covering the Nuremberg Trials, and then as a screenwriter for MGM. Late in his life, he lived in Eilat, Israel.
Protagonists who assume new identities, often because they are transplanted into foreign cultures, are a recurring element in Llewellyn's novels, including a spy adventure that extends through several volumes.
Llewellyn married twice: his first wife was Nona Sonstenby, whom he married in 1952 and divorced in 1968, and his second wife was Susan Heimann, whom he married in 1974.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
off-tbr-and-into-wpb
March 6, 2014
Dedication: To the memory of my sister
Gladwys,
Commandant, Royal Red Cross,
and her neices, Ann and Sally,
and marie, nicest of women,
killed in the bombing of London, June 1944
ever with love
Richard.
Opening: Dearly touched a heart can be with proof of love from an absent one.
This is the third installment about Huw Morgan and I am hoping that it will be livelier than the disappointing and lack-lustre Up, Into the Singing Mountains.
5* How Green Was My Valley
2* Up, into the Singing Mountain
CR Down Where The Moon is Small
February 19, 2017
Loved the first book in college. Disappointed by the second. This one was even harder to get through. It's been years since I read it now, so the details are fuzzy, but I remember that Huw wanders through life attracted to beautiful women and destroying their lives. I wanted to break into the narrative and warn the women to run from his handsome face and never look back! These poor broken women. I think one kills herself and another jumps off a cliff. It's like watching a train wreck, and not one with amazing special effects to make it go "wow," just the crashing, twisting, and mess.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 23, 2025
I think that it is clear that, in this book, Llewellyn was trying very hard to convey some things that he wanted to say but that he was unable to express in the language that he had available. The most lyrical and evocative passages are the passages set back in the valley in Wales; some of the early passages on the Patagonian landscape come close, but most of the rest of the book is fairly flat, and it seems to me that it is because he could not find the right voice in which to write. I think this is because Llewellyn wrote the book later in his life, after travelling in Argentina, and he could not draw from the same personal history as he could with How Green Was My Valley.
Overall there would be a very interesting novel about the early colonial history of Patagonia, drawing from a very solid analogy with the colonial history of Wales, in here, if it were written with a better voice and if the weird subplots about adultery were removed or rewritten to make more sense---unlike Llewellyn's writing in *How Green*, in this book the women have often seem to have very little agency and are mainly interested in switching allegiance to whoever the most powerful man is at any moment, it is very strange and a bit offputting. It reminds me a bit of *Earthly Powers*, being a book at its core about how one person experiences massive global events over a long time, and that book also has an obsession with sex in a vaguely offputting way; but there the excuse is that the unreliable narrator is themselves uncomfortable with their sexuality, and it is a clear choice by the author to write it the way that it is written. Here the narrative is very uneven and many passages seem dashed off with very little thought or conscious agency. I can be very clear about what I mean here - essentially all of the women the narrator sleeps with throughout the book die off very quickly afterwards, it is clearly intentional on the part of the author, but it is never used, not to allow the narrator to show some introspection, nor to make some religious or philosophical point by the author, they just die for the sake of shock value, it seems. A few of them appear, the narrator sleeps with them, and then they die within 30 pages, and it just feels totally pointless, there is no emotional or narrative point.
I highly recommend *How Green*, but this one is not worth reading at all. If you want commentary on colonial South America read Jorge Luis Borges or Gabriel García Márquez. I particularly recommend The Besieged City by Lispector, who does a far better job at portraying the kind of woman that Llywellyn fails to portray here.
Overall there would be a very interesting novel about the early colonial history of Patagonia, drawing from a very solid analogy with the colonial history of Wales, in here, if it were written with a better voice and if the weird subplots about adultery were removed or rewritten to make more sense---unlike Llewellyn's writing in *How Green*, in this book the women have often seem to have very little agency and are mainly interested in switching allegiance to whoever the most powerful man is at any moment, it is very strange and a bit offputting. It reminds me a bit of *Earthly Powers*, being a book at its core about how one person experiences massive global events over a long time, and that book also has an obsession with sex in a vaguely offputting way; but there the excuse is that the unreliable narrator is themselves uncomfortable with their sexuality, and it is a clear choice by the author to write it the way that it is written. Here the narrative is very uneven and many passages seem dashed off with very little thought or conscious agency. I can be very clear about what I mean here - essentially all of the women the narrator sleeps with throughout the book die off very quickly afterwards, it is clearly intentional on the part of the author, but it is never used, not to allow the narrator to show some introspection, nor to make some religious or philosophical point by the author, they just die for the sake of shock value, it seems. A few of them appear, the narrator sleeps with them, and then they die within 30 pages, and it just feels totally pointless, there is no emotional or narrative point.
I highly recommend *How Green*, but this one is not worth reading at all. If you want commentary on colonial South America read Jorge Luis Borges or Gabriel García Márquez. I particularly recommend The Besieged City by Lispector, who does a far better job at portraying the kind of woman that Llywellyn fails to portray here.
August 27, 2019
Amazing book series, so poetic and beautifully descriptive. I read all of these books in 1980 & again over the years since. I plan to get them all again & binge-read them!!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews