5.0
Of Talons and Teeth
ByPublisher Description
An historical novel set in Wales before the Industrial Revolution, as human love tries to flower amidst squalor and serfdom.
Wales, a mining village, pre-industrial revolution. A world of serfdom and squalor, its inhabitants oppressed by both Chapel conformist impulses and the predations of a new kind of capitalism being born.
Sion, a metalworker, strikes up an illicit relationship with Katherine, the wife of the mineowner's personal dogsbody. And so begins the struggle of non-transactional and non-exploitative human love to be recognised in a place bent on the destruction and negation of that very thing.
A mix of political anger, historical excavation, Celtic mysticism, praise of the human impulse to love and rage at avarice and exploitation, Of Talons and Teeth seeks to explore that moment when human beings and the natural beauties around them were turned into mere chattels; when Mammon became the only god worth worshipping.
Wales, a mining village, pre-industrial revolution. A world of serfdom and squalor, its inhabitants oppressed by both Chapel conformist impulses and the predations of a new kind of capitalism being born.
Sion, a metalworker, strikes up an illicit relationship with Katherine, the wife of the mineowner's personal dogsbody. And so begins the struggle of non-transactional and non-exploitative human love to be recognised in a place bent on the destruction and negation of that very thing.
A mix of political anger, historical excavation, Celtic mysticism, praise of the human impulse to love and rage at avarice and exploitation, Of Talons and Teeth seeks to explore that moment when human beings and the natural beauties around them were turned into mere chattels; when Mammon became the only god worth worshipping.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesOf Talons and Teeth Reviews
5.0
WndyJW
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“I loved this book. I agree with the message that any economic system that makes of human labor and nature commodities to be exploited is evil and those that profit from this system are corrupt or will be corrupted by it. I love the prose, Niall Griffiths has a gift for language and I will read anything he writes. Like all of Niall’s books, some passages are raw, but so beautifully written I have a visceral reaction to the depictions of the worst of humanity in some passages and other passages I read 2,3, or 4 times for the sublime writing or the wisdom.
Trangressive fiction is a difficult genre, it’s too easy to write negative characters using gratuitously foul language, but often those characters seem one dimensional, it takes a gift to write a character who exists on the periphery of society committing crimes or gruesome murders without depriving that character of their humanity. Niall Griffiths is one such writer.
As long as greed and Capitalism are the engine of commerce this book will remain timely.
Highly recommended.”
About Niall Griffiths
Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool and has now lived in Wales for over a quarter of a century. An established novelist and professor of creative writing, his work has been translated into twenty languages, adapted for the screen and widely reviewed. His works include Grits, Sheepshagger and Stump.
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