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ASK AT THE UNICORN by Norman Thomas

ASK AT THE UNICORN

By

Publisher: New Directions

Poetic, in a sing-song, dreamy-realistic style, this first novel tells of an Americanized Welshman's return to his own country. Morgan Jones, at his father's dying request, comes back from a swinging life in San Francisco to seek ""wisdom"" from an old family friend, Grando. Hunting Grando, Morgan is plunged immediately into the dark poetic inconsistencies of a land and a people balanced between sea and mountain, between past legends and pub talk and fights. Morgan finds himself a girl and becomes embroiled in various local mysteries and troubles. In the end he decides it is worth fighting and staying for. Small scale, and somewhat special in its appeal, this novel successfully conveys the dreamy, crabbed, real, involved life of a country which, though cut off in a backwater and a private language of life, manages to keep both its singing past and its lusty present. Succinct and vivid, it is a poem that breaks naturally in and out of equally real prose and dialogue.