The Jeweller

by Caryl Lewis

That was the horror of your sweetheart could stick a knife into your eyeball and sharpen it a notch every chance they got.

Mari supplements her modest stock as a market-stallholder with the trinkets she acquires clearing the houses of the dead. Living in a tiny cottage by the shore – alone apart from a pet cat and the monkey, Nanw – she surrounds herself with the lives of others, combing through letters she has gleaned and putting up photographs of strangers on her small mantelpiece for company.

Mari is looking for something beyond saleable goods and borrowed memories. As she works on cutting the perfect emerald, she inches closer to a discovery that will transform her life and throw her relationships with old friends into relief. To move forward she must shed her life of things past and start again. How she does so is both surprising and shocking...

Genres: Novels, British Literature

175 pages, Paperback

First published April 2, 2007

About the author

Caryl Lewis is an award winning Welsh language novelist. She was raised in Aberaeron before moving at the age of twelve to her family's farm in the parish of Dihewyd. She is an alumnus of Durham University and University of Wales Aberystwyth. Her first novel, Dal hi!, was published in 2003.

Reviews

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mari lives alone in a remote cottage by the sea with only her cat and a rather needy and temperamental pet monkey for company. The latter has the same love of trinkets as Mari. The ‘clutter’ that fills the cottage is the vintage clothing and jewellery gleaned from house clearances or bought at auction that Mari sells on her market stall, along with the letters and photographs she obsessively collects containing the stories of other people’s lives.

From the beginning, I was struck by the author’s imaginative and descriptive writing about landscape and nature, skilfully preserved in Gwen Davies’ translation.

‘The sea was breathing in the distance, dark against the growing light, and seagulls were being flung across the air like litter.’

‘Catkins of pussy willow and hazel caught the light like earrings: grey-silver droplets and knuckles of pale gold that twisted on an updraught.’

I particularly liked the way that inanimate objects become animate in Mari’s eyes. So a beech tree is described as ‘flirting its little fans of beaten neon-green at her’ or freshly laundered vintage clothes destined for her stall are ‘alive on the line as though their new owners were dancing in them right now‘. Mari even sees the jewels she collects and works with as having a life and personality of their own. At one point, she refers to some jewels as ‘giving her a hard time’.

Unfolding over the course of a year, the reader witnesses Mari’s physical and mental struggles, especially when the future of the market where she has her stall is placed in jeopardy. As summer turns to stormy autumn, things grow darker, events from earlier in Mari’s life are revealed and the reader begins to understand the complex nature of her past relationships. There is closure of a sort but also a sense of history repeating itself.

The Jeweller is a slim novel but beautifully written. It’s a book which packs a lot into a small space.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a strange book for me. It had some beautiful prose and descriptive passages, but the monkey.... well I couldn't get the sadness of the monkey and it's life set up (and death) out of my mind. One word... VET!
The characters, I couldn't warm to, but the story did need telling. The outcome for the MC was euphoric, but lesser characters didn't fare so well.
It was a hard read, emotionally, for me. A lot of times this is a good thing because it makes us dig deeper into ourselves, but I actually felt sadder for the monkey than I did for the MC. I know that the author was clever in mirroring the monkey's life with the MC and in order to free the MC... she had to "free" the monkey. Still it was sad for me.

[Jackie Law · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Jeweller, by Caryl Lewis (translated by Gwen Davies), tells the story of Mari, a middle-aged woman living in a ‘lonely little cottage above the sea’ near an unnamed town in Wales. Mari keeps a pet monkey, Nanw, in a cage on the deep set window ledge of her bedroom. The cottage is packed full of vintage clothing, jewellery and other people’s memorabilia, much of which Mari sells at her market stall, now threatened with closure for redevelopment. She collects other people’s photographs and letters, recreating the lives of those featured in her head. Her own past is coloured by her beginnings which are slowly revealed.

Mari has a good friend at the market, Mo, who, with her husband, Dai, clears the houses of the dead. Mari will sometimes go along for the company. Mo looks out for Mari when she is under the weather. Mari suffers migraines and other debilitating conditions from time to time. Mari is also fond of another market seller, Dafydd, but their relationship is complex.

The story is character driven, unfolding in spare prose around a swirling vortex of shadows, past hurts and blame. There are rich descriptions of place. Within this, the characters are portrayed with sympathy although each carry flaws. Depths are glimpsed but in tantalising opacity.

A haunting darkness pervades the text. Mari’s life is cluttered not just by physical objects but also longing and regret. She is afraid of the sea. She is afraid of how others regard her following a tragedy for which she harbours a degree of liability.

Each short chapter offers clues and reveals as the year in which the story is set moves through the seasons. We learn of Mari’s troubled relationship with her late father, a much loved local vicar. We learn why Mari is so intrigued by strangers’ letters. The penultimate chapters provide the final puzzle pieces although the reader is left to decide how certain aspects fit together. When dealing with the past not every question can be answered. The intersection of lives create unforeseen ripples.

This is a story that will offer more on rereading. It is not difficult but offers many layers. A study of grief and the weight of longing for what might have been. An evocative, poignant read.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written novel and the translation is superb. The language is so poetic, with spirituality and a connection with nature and the natural world woven exquisitely throughout the book.

It's one of those novels which seems quietly compelling and then something takes you completely by surprise. There are so many fascinating characters from Mari, the jeweller of the title, to fellow market stall holders Mo and Gwyn, to young Dafydd, the son of a friend of Mari's who passed away in tragic circumstances. They each have their own stories to tell and answers they are seeking from life.

There is a sense too that Mari is always searching for something throughout the story, an element of mystery. What is the treasure she hopes to uncover as she helps clear old houses? With its short chapters, this is a book which is deceptively simple to read but which has much to make sense of and understand. In the book, as in life, all is not neatly resolved and the reader has to make some of their own decisions as to what has come to pass. It is one of those books which I think I would take more from on each re-reading as my understanding deepened.

With jewels playing an central role in the Mari's life, I cannot help but say that this is a little gem of a book.

[Helen Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a trip to contemporary yet very remote land, like , yes in "Hinterland", a TV series in which the author was involved, a fact I learned only after I finished the little book.
I had seen parts of it and felt the strange familiarity of gnome-y characters, somehow impossible to relate to in their hard, totally un-glamourous, daily lives, sprinkled throughout with religious acts or at least, folklore.
I loved the lively descriptions of gemstones, the sea, the seasons. They really were infused with life and a distinct character, whereas the protagonist never was fully revealed in her appearance.
Yes, she was depressed, kept a tricky little ape as a pet, loved gemstones and other people's residues which she somehow kept as her own after clearing their houses when the inhabitants had died and noone else would claim their inheritance.
Even the ending doesn't reveal what happened to her. Has she ever been for real? or a ghost like appearance, fleeting and only inferable by the traces she left?
Lonliness, illness (mental and physical) , violence and death were ever so near in her experience.
Fascinating.

[Gill C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such beautiful writing that draws you in, gorgeous descriptions of people and places. The writer really draws you in, makes you curious about what happens next, once I started to read, I couldn’t put it down and spent an afternoon reading the whole book 📖

[Carol Bainbridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed some ot it

[Ivan Monckton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A carefully crafted Welsh novel of love and loss. Ignore the Goodreads blurb and read the book for yourself!

[Jaffareadstoo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mari lives in her cottage by the shore with her cat and a monkey called Nanw. Mari supplements her income by running a market stall where she sells the vintage clothing and other trinkets she accumulates from helping her friend Mo who clears the houses of people who have died. Mari comes across as a rather sad character, she is prone to illness and introspection and there's an aura of grief and desolation surrounding her which adds to the overall ambiance of the novel.

The Jeweller is a quirky story which is made all the more interesting for having been translated from its original Welsh, a language which is as fascinating as it is lyrical, and the author's imaginative flair for story telling is complimented by the creativeness of just how strongly the story comes across in translation. It's an intelligently written character driven novel which explores the stifling power of family and of the meaning of friendship. As the story gets deeper it becomes obvious that Mari has a troubled relationship with those around her, often finding more comfort in the pieces of jewelry she collects and then polishes into something beautiful.

The Jeweller is about recognising the emotional pull of the past whilst having the strength to move forward into a more controlled sort of future.

Originally published as Y GEMYDD The Jeweller is published in English by Honno Welsh Women's Press.

[Ffion · Rating 3 out of 5]

Llyfr sydd yn chwarae gyda'r dychymyg. Roeddwn yn hoff iawn o rhai rhannau o'r llyfr ond roedd eraill ychydig yn ddiflas.