ON THE BLACK HILL

by Bruce Chatwin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 7, 1982

The long, narrow, eccentric 20th-century lives of twin-brother bachelor farmers on the Wales/England border--in a diverting but oddly unsatisfying short novel that tries to ride the fine lines between sharp satire, wry pathos, and grim psychopathology. Born at the century's turn, identical twins Lewis and Benjamin Jones grow up coddled by artistic mother Mary (a minister's daughter) and bullied by rough father Amos. (He kills their beloved pig Hoggage.) The household is further darkened by the Amos/ Mary conjugal storms, by Amos' feverish addiction to Non-Conformist religion, by the nasty elopement of the boys' sister Rachel (Amos' favorite), by Amos' success in keeping his lads out of the Great War. (They're branded as cowards in the village.) So it's not altogether surprising--though not altogether convincing either--that the twins (who share physical symptoms in the fabled twinship manner) are ""crabby old bachelors"" by age 22. Both are obsessively devoted to Mother. Lewis is tempted by women but resists (except for one fiasco with a visiting bohemian sort); he collects news stories of air crashes. Benjamin is jealously devoted to Lewis, with distinct homosexual overtones; he is religious, miserly, maternal, manipulative. And when Amos and Mary die, the twins will preserve the farmhouse intact for the next 50 years, living in fear of antique dealers, sleeping side by side in the parental bed. But, while sometimes presented as the stuff of clinical case-history, the twins are also seen as the quiet, sane center in a village-world of violence, small-mindedness, and misery: they befriend wome woebe-gone local outcasts', they are involved on the fringes of domestic murder. And the final view of old Lewis and Benjamin is predominately affectionate, even spiritual--as they develop charming platonic relationships with unusual women, as they're cruelly treated by their precious heir (great-nephew Kevin), as they edge into. a few small freedoms before the end (modern tractors are bought, Lewis actually flies a plane at last). Unfortunately, Chatwin, best known for the distinctive travel-writing of In Patagonia, never quite manages to blend all these strains in his detached, crystalline narration--and the faux-naif, fable-like tone (suggestive of a long short-story) doesn't fully hold up over the novel's length. Still, except for an occasional self-conscious lapse (""the gavel descended with an onanistic thud""), Chatwin's prose is an evocative, pared-down mixture of the gritty and the lyrical; the portrait of changing Wales village/farm life is bleakly authentic; and, despite all the inconsistencies and half-answered questions, the central twin-portrait does stay in the mind--a trifle muddled, perhaps, but nostalgic, comic, and faintly disturbing.

Pub Date: Jan. 7, 1982

ISBN: 0143119060

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1982

Categories: FICTION