A Voice Through a Cloud

by Denton Welch, Eric Oliver (Foreword)

One of the most beautifully peceptive novels in the English language, A Voice through a Cloud is a devastating account of vulnerability, gay desire and determination A Voice through a Cloud is English novelist Denton Welch's moving account of his recovery from a bicycling accident that left him partially paralyzed at the age of 20. Espouser of picnics and bicycle rides, cataloger of exquisite textures, pitiless surgeon of affect and mores, and also a pretty good painter, Denton Welch has drawn fans as far removed from his world of English pastoralism as William Burroughs and Richard Hell. Characterized by Welch's mercilessly acute powers of observation, A Voice Through a Cloud is a tour-de-force of both rigorous, detached self-analysis and clear-eyed external description, as Welch lies in a hospital bed, struggling with his illness and his relationships with family and doctor. Completed as Welch was dying 13 years later from complications resulting from the accident, and first published in 1950, A Voice through a Cloud 's pristine prose sparkles with gleaming surfaces, human motivations clearly perceived and a steadiness of tone and register. While In Youth Is Pleasure is probably Welch's best-loved book, and Maiden Voyage his most scandalous, A Voice through a Cloud is his masterpiece, containing his most accomplished writing.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, LGBT, Queer, Literature, British Literature, Queer Lit

262 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

Maurice Denton Welch was an English-American writer and painter, admired for his vivid prose and precise descriptions.

Reviews

[Alwynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Denton Welch died before he could complete his final novel but even in its unfinished state, I found it an incredibly compelling piece. Here, as with earlier work, Welch mines his own history for material, ultimately producing something reminiscent of contemporary autofiction. The lead character Denton’s twenty, studying art at Goldsmiths’ in London, when he’s horrifically injured after a car runs into his bike on a deserted road, waking up in hospital, barely able to move, he finds his body almost unrecognisable. Welch’s first-person narrative traces Denton’s journey back to some form of independence, although in reality Welch never fully recovered from the accident, which eventually led to his death at 33.

I thought it was an intensely moving, persuasive piece both in its depiction of dealing with a particular and sudden physical disability and its searing portrayal of undergoing medical treatment in mid-1930s’ England – although some elements of Denton’s treatment might still be recognisable today. As a patient Denton is deprived of any sense of himself as an autonomous thinking or feeling being, his nurses and doctors privilege schedules and procedures over their patients’ personal needs, expressions of pain are interpreted as self-indulgent bids for attention or merely unnecessary disruption, patients with infectious diseases are lumped together with surgical cases, in some sort of hellish, human melange. It’s clear that part of this relates to then-prevailing cultural assumptions about gender, a requirement to project or maintain a particular version of masculinity at all times, something Welch is clearly conscious of and that surfaces as he chronicles what happens to him and around him in the ward. Although I’ve also come across articles suggesting this approach harks back to WW1, and the ideal of the stoical, wounded hero.

Alongside these broader issues Welch has created what seems an incredibly intimate portrait of someone dealing with severe injury and illness, one that carefully delineates all the ways in which this might radically alter an individual’s perspective: everything Denton took for granted about his life is swept aside and he’s left groping for new techniques for processing his suddenly-shrunken world. Welch represents the complexities of this situation in vivid, breath-taking detail, the highs and the lows, the small gestures or scenes that can make a day bearable: a visitor bringing chocolate, flowers on a hospital table or a nurse who treats his wounds with some semblance of tenderness. This attention to minutiae extends to an array of fascinating miniature character studies, patients, doctors, all are deftly sketched out but these are accompanied by an almost surgical self-examination, Denton’s as ruthless in representing himself as he is the people he encounters, self-doubt, snobbery, petulance, are all rigorously documented and I found this candour made the character oddly likable. At times I was reminded of the kind of endless self-searching sometimes found in Sartre’s fiction or buried in the emotional morass of Violette Leduc’s autobiographical work, alienation and all that brings with it, people with a desperate desire both to connect and to reject human contact, all tangled up together. Part of this tangle relates to the character’s thinly-veiled queer identity, here glimpsed in Denton’s growing attraction and dependence on the one doctor who seems sympathetic to his plight. Yet despite the initial impression of intimacy, the book also has a curious, enigmatic quality, as if Welch might be playing with his readers, inviting them to relate to the central character, and through him to Welch, but at the same time calling into question the character’s resemblance to anything beyond the bounds of the page.

[Mariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard a voice through a great cloud of agony and sickness. The voice was asking questions. It seemed to be opening and closing like a concertina. The words were loud, as the swelling notes of an organ, then they melted to the tiniest wiry tinkle of water in a glass.

Everyone dies alone. The cyclone of the witch of hell hath no fury opens sulks and pouts. A why doesn't my bike freedom fly like this all of the time young man with things he wanted to do, to live, under towed to her house of it's all a bitch, which bitch, mother nature's sister too, and it is so fucking horrible. The take us all down with it orbit of it's just not fair, this isn't happening. Anyone would die alone in that hospital, the system, the machine. Smells like that young man with the promise isn't coming back to bedside. Every day a little bit more. The weight of pity sits on your chest, the impatience of the nurses steals your breath like one of those fairy tale cats, doctors grin nightmares. The masks or are they shadows playing tricks grins. The kinds that make my tummy do that flip I hate. The nights are long enough to make you forget. Wake up and remember and the remembering is amputated from what memories were before and the same memories are after.
He was dying when he wrote A Voice Through A Cloud. I feel like he saved my life when he could save his own.

I wrote about the night bird cries, the sea sounds and the lonely barking, and I liked what I wrote in flashes; but something was wrong with it. There is always something wrong with writing. So I tore the paper up at last, liking the untouched memory so much better, not wanting it forced into the insincerity of words.

Don't you believe this. Denton Welch is the perfect writer. Every time I had ever wanted to be talked to like I and everyone was a real person. Whenever I say that this is what I mean. How he has this way of wanting. The way he has of being still under the screwed up face of today to the bleeding you do underneath. When he is afraid the doctor didn't mean it when he suggested that he might get to escape the awful institution, come live with him. Don't be disrupted, be accepted. When he just wishes he would ask again so he could believe he had really meant it. When he immediately starts to care about everything he never cared about when he thinks he's going to get to leave the awful hospital he demanded to leave. He knows he's doing it and it is this wonderful way of being outside yourself and inside. I just wish I was still reading this book. I felt so warm and okay because whatever he wrote I got to be. Inside. It gives me this feeling that is going to spite all of the heaviness when he...

I began to long, as I had before, for some special smell, some special music that would fill me, lift me up and carry me away, float me off the rocks of my body and sweep me into some wideness, some vast expanse of blue-grey nothingness.

I stared at all the types, and a terrible feeling of loneliness swept over me; this in spite of my special wish to be alone that night. I felt that everyone was cut off from me, that it would always be so, and that nothing I could do would ever make any difference. I turned away from the people hating them passionately, yet longing to be taken into their bosoms.

I know. I don't know what to do about feeling like this. I would read Denton Welch describing the man in his hospital who stares sadly at Welch's locker for his tasty (I'll take his word for it) foodstuffs. He no longer allows him to mooch off him once his weight is too much for him to bear. The sinister nurse who abuses in the night. In the morning he's smiles and Welch's introspective shame and questions. I can't get enough of the brother's friends who shower him with their strange mercies. I want all of it. It's horrible when he's forcing himself to walk again. When I say horrible I mean that every word of this book is glorious. If you could be hugged and know at the end that it was all worth it that is seeing through his eyes. (But better than that. How do you say that you felt despairing of being ugly old you forever and it wasn't like that when you read this one book?) I never wanted anything more than I want a Denton Welch in my head to see instead of me. It's so hard to keep doing this.

I fixed my eyes on them and experienced the utter silence of the house. To be awake in the sleeping house gave me power. It was right that I should watch. I was no longer part of the nursing home; it seemed incongruous that I should still be there.

I distrusted it, not because I thought it false, but because I felt it pleased me too much and so falsified my judgement. I told myself that it was a trick of his and that he knew it pleased, just as a child sometimes knows that its childishness is endearing. I waited for him to overdo the smile and repel me. But he never did, or if he did I embraced the extravagance wholeheartedly.

I'm always going to need this. I know this. I was in the state to make it human. He's perfect. I can't tell you how horrible wonderful and like dying it is to not be able to breathe when everything is this beautiful. It's like removing every stone in your body and you gotta grow everything all back together again. The heavy pulling out in your gut by brick. I don't know of anything more beautiful than when he's in his head. It was made more believable to me when he has to stop doing it because of their voices through the air, the dream, the breaking, the doubt and the hope. Damn damn damn. I am not doing this right. I don't know how anyone couldn't like Denton Welch. When he's alone with himself and his visitors look unbelievably beautiful walking away. Don't leave me.

p.s. He even knew about the stone lions. He draws a stone lion when he's in hospital. I wasn't alive yet when he wrote this and this year when dealing with my stupid back problems (so awful) I was fixated on stone lions. He even knew about that. (I had this feeling that my body acting without me could be frozen. Stiff cemented snarling. You were here.) Denton Welch had powers.

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

To read Denton Welch is to read his sensibility. The words of this book (and each of his books) are so thick with it that at times it’s almost hard to see the words. I didn’t know at first why I read him so slowly. At first I actually thought I was bored, as his writing has a dryly objective quality and precision of detail that can overwhelm, but then I realized that the writing was so tactilely sensuous that every other line was setting my mind adrift, and each of my senses along with it, into the rooms and landscapes of his descriptions, and once there would wander into memory chambers of its own, re-touching, re-tasting, re-seeing drifty yet specific things from the far and recent past, until it had wandered so far off that the readerly thread snapped and I’d reawaken a page later having no idea what I had just read. This is an exhausting ordeal that at times I mistook for boredom, but it’s actually its fruitful twin – revery.

Revery is induced when reading his books. It’s not that the books themselves are reveries, or even revery-like, even though they do take place almost entirely in memory. His books actually have a very nuts-&-bolts quality, deeply rooted in specific sensations as they are, sensations that actually feel etched into the pages. But Welch himself I’m certain was a master of revery, and his sensibility is saturated with it, fed and unbelievably enriched by it, so it leaches into the pages and thus into the mind of the reader, inducing revery.

I suppose the subject of every artist is his or her own sensibility. But this is true only if you accept the full spectrum of degrees of encoding and artifice that can interpose themselves between the raw sensibility and the final product. In Welch there are no obstacles between his raw sensibility and the reader. There is such a pervasive honesty, and an objective laying bare of himself and his world, that it can be disarming, and this honesty and objectivity was actually criticized (in staid old England) when his works were published. But of course it’s this very quality that makes his works perennially fascinating to those who are receptive.

The title phrase occurs early in the book, as Welch’s alter-ego is regaining consciousness after being hit by a car while out biking – the book is a recounting of his search for health and recovery after the accident, which he was never to find, dying from complications 14 years later. Through a cloud of pain and suffering, as he’s lying on the side of the road, he hears a voice asking with great concern about his well being. But the phrase can also refer to Welch’s own voice, as it reaches us through the pain and suffering of the writing of the book. This was his final book, not quite completed. As his companion, Eric Oliver, says in the foreword

…and in the last few months of his life he was given morphia to alleviate the constant pain. Still he worked on, though the effort to do so gave him a high temperature and he would have to lie on his bed blindfolded without moving. Towards the end he could only work for three or four minutes at a time and then he would get a raging headache and his eyes would more or less give out. Complication after complication set in, and the left side of his heart started failing. Even then, he made colossal and nearly successful attempts to finish the book.

But the book itself doesn’t feel painful, though descriptions of pain are part of its fabric they only add to the dark and richly toned joy, however muted, that permeates the book through its courageous and sensuous engagement with the world and its people. This is a book that can re-engage you to your own world.

[Leylak Dalı · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tatilini geçirmek için bisikletiyle yola çıkan sanat öğrencisi Maurice aylarca hastanede, ardından nekahat süresini geçirmek için bir bakımevinde kalmasını gerektiren ağır bir kaza geçirir. Konuyu arka kapaktan okuyunca ruh bunaltan hastalık ve hastane öyküleri okuyacağımı düşünmüştüm ama öyle olmadı. Maurice'nin gerek kişisel duygu ve düşünceleri, gerek gözlemleri yormadan, su gibi akıp gitti. İsmi gibi bulutun içinden gelen bir ses oldu...

[iris · Rating 5 out of 5]

dare i say essential reading??

[Gala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me siento muy apegada a las personas vulnerables y sensibles y Denton Welch se ve que es una de esas personas. Lo que más me gustó del libro es cómo describe a los personajes con detalles. Por ejemplo, el protagonista y narrador, que supuestamente es él, Denton, mira a los pobres no porque crea que puede ayudarlos sino solo para enterarse de cómo son, para "escuchar y mirar, para luego liberarme y escabullirme". Otra cosa: a veces no sabe si él mismo está siendo sincero o irónico. Cada vez que alguien cita un dicho, se hace la imagen en la cabeza. Por ejemplo hay un dicho que habla de un barco y un balde de brea. Él se imagina estando en un barco en una situación límite a punto de hundirse por un balde de brea, y no le gusta verse en esa situación. Mi escena favorita fue una en la que un paciente que estaba internado en el mismo hospital que Denton se pregunta por qué los demás visitantes se quejan de que para identificar a su novia dice que es la chica a la que le falta una oreja y tiene una pierna medio chueca. Si su novia es así, por qué tendría que identificarla de otra manera?

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Denton Welch was born in 1915, and lived to be only 33. This is a fictionalised account of the bicycle accident which damaged his spine and kidneys, and ultimately led to his death. Until this accident, Welch had been a painter, but long periods of isolation drew him to writing. His two published novels were admired in his lifetime by writers like E. M. Forster and Edith Sitwell, and A Voice Through a Cloud was published posthumously. Initially I was wary of reading a novel that had not been finished by the author before his death: I felt the experience might be unsatisfying, or the text would seem rough. However, I need not have worried: A Voice Through a Cloud is an astonishingly accomplished novel, marked by Welch's lucid, granular prose, and his careful exploration of sensory details. The first half of this book is harrowing, as Welch gives an account of his accident, and the dehumanising and often brutal treatment he experiences in hospital wards. This is a necessary and vibrant reflection on the disrespectful and cruel ways in which patients were -- and continue to be -- treated by suspicious and detached doctors and nurses. The book is not always despairing, however: Welch also focuses on simple, physical details which allowed his life to become bearable, and conjures up the atmosphere of nursing homes, seaside villages, and warm firesides in vivid and tender descriptions. The book ends before Welch was finished, but the novel has a sense of progress and a carefully judged flow, and the text on a sentence level is all exquisite. Welch is an important writer whose work should be cherished.

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last, and I think best, book by Denton Welch. This describes his recovery from a horrible accident in which he was hit by a car while bicycling; but it's more than that. At first he describes his new reality of finding himself in a hospital bed, unable to move, dominated by unsympathetic nurses. As he heals, he begins to notice other patients in the ward and, curious a a magpie, observes their stories and describes them in perfect prose. Eventually he leaves the hospital for a nursing home where he becomes obsessed by his doctor and starts to figure out to do next. His whole life has changed and he mourns his health and the way he'll never be able to take strength and ease for granted again.

But it's not self pitying. Welch is too interested in life and in observing people to get stuck there. I've turned down about a million page corners of places where his descriptions are just so perfect. If a writer is someone upon whom nothing is wasted, Welch is a true writer.

[İpek Dadakçı · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bulutun İçinden Bir Ses, sanat okulu öğrencisi bir gencin bisikletiyle yengesini ziyarete giderken yolda geçirdiği trafik kazasıyla başlıyor ve bu gencin yaklaşık yedi ay boyunca önce hastanede ardından bakımevinde kaldığı süre boyunca yaşadıklarını, zihninden geçenleri ve duygu dünyasını anlatıyor. Otobiyografik bir roman bu. Yazar Denton Welch, tıpkı romandaki anlatıcı gibi, genç yaşta bir trafik kazası geçirdikten sonra uzun bir tedavi sürecinden geçiyor, hatta kötürüm kalıyor. 33 yaşında öldüğünde ise yaşadığı bu dönemi anlattığı eseri aslında yarım kalıyor ancak roman hem genel atmosferine hem de çağdaş edebiyata çok uygun bir şekilde sonlanmış, bilmediğiniz takdirde size yarım kalmış bir eser hissi vermiyor. Duygusal açıdan da bir okur olarak böyle sonlanmasından çok memnunum ben.

Başlamadan önce Daniel Pennac’ın Bedenin Güncesi’nin kaza geçiren bir genç tarafından kaleme alınmış hali gibi tarifleyebileceğim bir kitap olduğunu düşünüyordum, ki bu kitabı da çok severim. Ama Bulutun İçinden Bir Ses, karakterin fizyolojik değişimlerinden ziyade ruh ve duygu dünyasına, dış dünyanın ve çevresindeki insanların bu dünyadaki yansımalarına odaklanan ve bunların karakterin zihninde yeniden şekillenmiş hallerini şiirsel bir dille aktaran bir roman.

Kendi kabuğunda yaşayan, biraz yalnızlık çeken ama hassas ve kırılgan yapısı nedeniyle de insanlarla kendi dünyası arasına duvarlar örmüş bir karakter anlatıcımız. Aynı zamanda hayalgücü oldukça geniş ve sanata -hem resim yapmaya hem yazmaya- ilgisi ve yeteneği var. İşte bu gözlem gücü ve yazma yeteneğiyle, hayalgücünü birleştiriyor karakterimiz ve aylar süren tedavi süreci boyunca yaşadıklarının yanı sıra, kendi kafasında inşa ettiği dış dünyayı ve bu dünyadaki insanları anlatıyor. Dışarıdaki dünyanın kendi tahayyüllerindeki halini, insanların ve onlarla olan ilişkilerinin kendi zihninde yeniden biçimlendirilmesini okuyoruz. Doğanın, mekanların ve eşyaların tasvirleri, bunların anlatıcıda uyandırdığı hisler ve neden olduğu çağrışımların anlatımı çok güçlü. Karakterin kafasında yarattığı mekanların ve dünyanın atmosferik anlatımları da çok etkileyici. Bunlar Welch’in şiirsel diliyle birleşince anlatıcının aslında boğucu ve kasvetli ortamından onunla beraber başka bir evrene beraber kaçıyormuş hissine kapılıyorsunuz siz de okurken. Welch’in bazı insanlık hallerine ve insani duygulara dair tespitleriyle dil ve anlatımını çok beğendim. Güzel bir roman Bulutun İçinden Bir Ses.

[Alec · Rating 5 out of 5]

"How could he ever get well if they wouldn't allow him to return to normal life!"

I'm confronted with the sad reality: this book is a masterpiece that never got to see itself whole. Welch captures suffering in ways that seem near invisible, writes the thoughts you didn't know you too had, and he has a unique voice distinguishing himself. I think we lost a brilliant writer, and I think he was so close.

"I felt then for a sparkling moment that anything might happen, that human beings were never really trapped."

[Berthe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Welch has a unique voice, and this portrait spoke to me on many levels. Some of it is shocking and desperate: the accident, the treatment, hospital life, the endless trudge to recovery. Yet even the worst depictions are peppered with humour and quirky observation. Overall i found this a very carefully crafted record of place, taste and time. The senses are overloaded not just by what Welch sees with his eyes, but with his extraordinary flights of imagination. Some are laugh-out-loud material. I particularly loved a description of a 3 legged cat. Also this amusing treasure, as he receives a visit from Miss Hellier: "Someone in a fur cape and a little felt hat was standing in the doorway smiling enigmatically. To my tense, expectant eyes she looked like some embodiment of Winter." As I reached the final few pages of this astonishing memoir, I was overcome with sadness as I knew Welch had died before finishing the work and it was very clear from the narrative that he was nowhere near the end.

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Denton Welch starts this account when as a teenager he is on his fateful cycle ride one June to visit his aunt, the ride that will leave him in hospital and care into the next year. Denton recreates the torment and isolation and at times loss of hope that was to plague him through this time, along with the few glimmers of hope and the few individuals who would help him see a way out of his nightmare.

This is an account of far more than an accident and its consequences; Denton's remarkable ability to express his feelings, his acute powers of observation and his great talent as a writer make this a living and thoroughly convincing record of a young man's life turned in its head.

This is a book that I cannot recommend too highly, the combination of its outspoken honesty and the brilliance of the writing make it irresistible. It ends rather abruptly, understandable given that the author was struggling to finish this before untimely death was to claim him.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book.

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly not pathetic

[Teaspoon Stories · Rating 4 out of 5]

Denton Welch is a bit like a No.7 bus for me. You wait for ages and then two come along together. I’d waited 40-odd years to re-read “In Youth is Pleasure” and then within just a few weeks I came across a second novel of his on a secondhand bookstall at a local market.

I don’t think Denton Welch would have minded too much being compared to a local bus service. His novel is full of mundane objects, humdrum events and prosaic experiences which he makes us see entirely differently when observed and recorded through the medium of his astonishingly acute and rather weird hyper-sensitivity. Here are some examples of his almost surreal descriptions that I found particularly striking:

- “I was exquisitely conscious of the textures of things. There was torture in the smooth sheets, in the hair of the mattress and the weight of the blankets” (p12).

- Struggling with bowel control, “when I looked down, after the great effort of moving myself a few inches, I saw a neat little lump lying on the table. It reminded me of the little sausages dogs leave tidily at the side of the pavement. With a sort of resigned amusement I picked up the little pellet at once and threw it out of the open window” (p21).

- A hospital visitor who “had no ear under the hair, only a frightening hole in the side of her head. I thought of all the terrible cases of legal mutilation: ears cropped, tongues slit, eyes gouged; she was linked in my mind with these atrocities” (p41).

- Imagining his doctor and the matron asleep in their beds with “his eyelids like pigeons’ eggs, half submerged in rich cream soup” and her “fears pressed flat like dried apricots in a jar” (p159).

- A single dahlia in a hospital vase, catching the sunlight and filling Denton “with an extraordinary upsurge of delight, a fierce renewal of pleasure” (p99).

- Medical dressings torn off by an “efficient” nurse so painfully that “the tiny hairs crackled as if on fire” (p49).

That last quote reminds us that Denton’s encounter with the health service following his road smash is hardly the usual enthusiastic panegyric of the caring profession that we expect these days. His hospital experiences are transformed into existential horrors that batter his heightened sensitivities. For example:

- The cruel, superior nurses who patronise and bully: “You mustn’t carry on like that, you know. We’re all very sorry but you can’t upset the other patients. Just take a hold of yourself. Men mustn’t cry” (p46).

- The night nurse “who was going to leave the nursing profession to become a Roman Catholic priest” and who physically assaults Denton in his hospital bed, shaking him, knocking him “from one side of the bed to the other” and slapping his face (p78).

- The nonchalant medical orderly who carelessly inserts the unsterilised catheter while having a furtive smoke, “pushing the soft little rubber tube down the urethra. It seemed to me an extraordinary thing to be doing, and I felt that I ought perhaps to resent his taking such strange liberties with my body when I was defenceless” (p14).

- The “dull loutish” medical students who pick or blow their noses or “scratched the spots on their chins” while they “scribbled notes on their little pads” (p29).

- Clumsy ambulance men who carry him on a stretcher as if he were “a loaf of bread being lifted out of the back of a baker’s van on a wire tray” (p51).

- The “vicious” radiologist “who lived only to hate and inflict pain” on her X-ray patients (p57).

- Fellow patients whose personal habits so disgust him that he sees them as “toad-eaters, sycophants, parasites” (p36).

- Even friends visiting him seem to vex him, and his special chum, Mark Lynch, only makes him feel guilty because of Mark’s own troubles (his brother’s just died) (p89).

I felt there might be a risk of being overwhelmed by the intensity of Denton’s first-person self-absorption. Everything is narrated through the perspective of his injuries and failing health: “Now I knew nothing was real but pain, heat, blood, tingling, loneliness and sweat … Everything I had loved was disgusting; and I was disgusting, too” (p23).

In this claustrophobic world as seen - corrosively, destructively, despairingly - from his own hospital bed, other people generally don’t come off at all well. But there are some exceptions.

He’s genuinely fond of fellow neurological patient, young Ray Anderson, who suffered brain trauma on a lads’ footie outing. Denton goes out of his way (uncharacteristically!) to get on with Ray, helping him re-learn the alphabet, and his grief on Ray’s death is subtle and intense: “Everything spoilt and wasted; the new teeth, the strong bones, the fresh scarlet blood and smooth skin, springing hair, shining eye” (p71).

As Denton moves in the second half of the book to a more congenial convalescence home on the Kent coast, his improving but still delicate health enables him to see some human relationships more positively. He’s fascinated by his aunt’s eccentric mother whose life has been frozen since the death in World War 1 of her son. And he develops a slightly creepy obsession with the kindly and well meaning Doctor Farley. His former landlady, the bohemian Miss Keziah Hellier, also seems about as close to him as he lets anyone get.

After reading two books by Denton Welch in close succession, I feel I’m getting to know him and I’m going to miss him - like a best mate who’s prickly, annoying and self-obsessed but also delightfully mischievous, frank and beguiling. So I’ll finish off with a few quotes which seem to me quintessentially Denton - a little sad, subversively mad, and painfully, self-consciously, obsessively honest:

- “There is always something wrong with writing. So I tore the paper up at last, liking the untouched memory so much better, not wanting it forced into the insincerity of words” (p159).

- “The wish to preserve dilapidated objects from the past was strong upon me” (p190).

- “The guest-house itself has an unusual name; it’s called Lesbia. You can’t miss it because it’s written in large gold round-hand right across the front” (p194).

- “I tried to smile, angry with myself now for taking everything so seriously, for being so easily ruffled. I told myself how petty it was to be forever brooding over slights. It was self-important, pompous, pathetic” (p199).

[Terresa Wellborn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is Welch's account of his life after a terrible bicycle accident. It's a book to read when in a contemplative mood. His words settle like a soft and floating blanket. His pain is keen, his observations, haunting, especially towards the end of the book. What takes place is not action as much as clouds of imagination, thought.

Some quotes:

"I began to long, as I had before, for some special smell, some special music that would fill me, lift me up and carry me away, float me off the rocks of my body and sweep me into some wideness, some vast expanse of blue-grey nothingness."

and

"I greedily embraced the never-ending sadness of human life. At that moment I wanted to be overwhelmed by it. Nothing else but the sadness of destruction seemed real. I would sink down, be its victim, fall asleep in it. How can I describe the deep vibrating pleasure I felt? Perhaps it was a little like the moment just before a child bursts into tears. He knows he is going to cry, he does nothing about it, he has no shame, he wants to be drowned, to be swallowed up forever in his own unhappiness." (p. 213)



The ending, of course, was never finished, was swallowed up in Welch's own early death, and left me feeling a bit haunted.

[Simon Robs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, so there be bits and pieces of "Marcel" in our protagonist "Maurice" to wit, a querulous and importunate neediness notwithstanding his very real dilemma of injury, pain and lengthy recovery whilst holed up in convalescence setting. This being the backdrop of our story here, a lad out for a bike foray, an accident and road back to, if ever, normalcy. He is given to careful scrutiny of environment and psychology of all those who must care for him, those being nurses, doctors and sundry caregivers who are mostly indifferent to emotional upheaval in their charges. There are piquant observations and some finely tuned imagery in these mostly staid settings that do offer glimpses of sublimity to an otherwise grey English air. It's an unfinished tale and it does indeed fall flat of its face for an ending. It also doesn't ever quite build a desire to "like" our chap Maurice more than any other of the also stolid characters, yet overall a quiet savor like a nice broth needing some succulence still satisfies a readers' want, if only till something hearty comes along. I'll probably read another of Welch's earlier books to see what he's got quivered to get him here.

[Jeff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I'm a big fan of Denton Welch's writing, this last, incomplete autobiographical novel was a bit of a struggle for me to finish.

As with his other writings, there is no real plot to speak of, but that part does not trouble me - I think it's one of Welch's strengths as a writer. What doesn't really work for me is that the author's idiosyncratic personality has become annoying and somewhat mean-spirited in these pages, making his voice unappealing and the narrative a bit dreary.

Of course, this novel is about the aftermath of a terrible traffic accident which left Welch a permanent invalid. But where his earlier novels (and his excellent short fiction) allow his unusual viewpoint and mannerisms to function as something of a mirror to the world around him, in "A Voice Through a Cloud" the mirror has become a dark cloak, and that defensive shield is simply too impenetrable to make for an interesting read.

[Sphinx · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovers of finely written memoirs will love this book. Although written as a novel it is closely based on the author’s own experiences. Welch’s style is incisive and at times macabre, always compelling and honest. When he complains about others and his circumstances he blames himself and ultimately wonders if he’s being selfish. It’s this internal struggle that maintains the momentum and the tension in the story. An image of the skeleton beneath the skin kept appearing to me as I was reading. Death hovering nearby. The writer’s bravery in confronting again this bleak period in his life is truly admirable. But there is brightness too in the lovely depiction of his landlady and his silent crush on his handsome doctor. Others may not see this as a 5-star read but I loved the naturalness of the writing and the poignancy of the story.

[Amijoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like to savor the language and scenery of a book and don't care about plot, then this book is a real gem. Welch is a wonderfully descriptive writer who intertwines external observation with internal narrative that runs the entire gamut of human emotions. All unapologetically expressed through the intelligence of a sensitive English young man. It's a beautiful and honest story, a quiet and absorbing read.

[§]

Unique and impressive.

[Neusovita · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,8

[Jeremy Blank · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book grabbed me from the outset, the writing was very different from anything that I remembered and the style very distinct. By the end the repetition was irritating and the style predictable. The author’s power of description was memorable and impressive the shift from a personal recovery to a personal journey of discovery somehow became diluted which was a shame. It’s rare for a book to have such a powerful start and then repeat itself for the last half but that’s how it read for me.

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 2 out of 5]

A barely fictionalized account of the accident that eventually caused the death of the author and the first year or more of his convalescence. There was something about the exacting and almost cruel observations of the people around him that kept me at bay. Perhaps I was just in the wrong mood, but despite some brilliant turns of phrase here and there, I just found this a bit of a slog. Will have to revisit it later.

[Guy Salvidge · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first 100 or so pages are searingly powerful and effective - some of the best and most emotive writing I've ever read. This is about the immediate aftermath of Welsh's injury. The second half is somewhat less interesting and it doesn't help that the narrative is unfinished (due to the author's death at 33). But overall this is a gripping and important read.

[Philemon - · Rating 3 out of 5]

This came highly recommended by someone who compared the author to Proust. The theme was to be coping with desolation after a personal catastrophe, in this case a horrible bicycle accident. While crisp narrative was duly delivered, whatever stylistic brilliance or philosophical depth I was waiting for never quite showed up. Perhaps a case of too strong advance praise.

[Sam Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Paltry bungalows and shops and traffic roundabouts made it difficult to be fond of human beings.' Febrile mood swings. Furniture that expresses a patient, silent guardian quality. The intoxicating vision of a strawberry. Indescribable pain. Magical.

[Esma Asalıoğlu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yazarın geçirdiği kazanın ardından iyileşme sürecinin zar zor kurgulanmış bir anlatımı. Belki de bu kitabı okumak için yanlış ruh halindeydim ama kitabın başlarındaki birkaç ilgi çekici kısım dışında okuması zor oldu benim için. Özellikle sonlara doğru anlatım çok tekrara düştü.

[Selen Su · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yazarın zihnindeymiş gibi hissettim okurken. Akıcı bi kitaptı. O kadar detaylıydı ki her şey zaman zaman takip edemediğim bile oldu. Hüzünlü bir kitap. Yazar hiç mutlu olamıyor depresifliği sürekli artıyor.

[Fatih Dogan · Rating 3 out of 5]

anglo-saxon “dokuzuncu hariciye koğuşu” diyebiliriz romana. tema olarak benzer. fiziksel acının hissedilmesi ve dayanılmazlığını iyi yansıtmış. çok fazla doğa ve atmosfer betimlemesi ve eşya ayrıntısı var olayın dramatik dozunun azalmasına yol açmış biraz bu durum.