The Other Side of the Mountain

by Christopher Hood

The Alison Press/Martin Secker & Warburg, 1980, ISBN 0436200880, hardcover, dust jacket

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing to edges and corners, no inscriptions, trifle dusty fore edges, stamp to bottom fore edge, sticker residue to back end papers, tape residue to covers, dust jacket show a little edge and shelf wear with minor cupping and creasing (see photographs)

“’Horace fell in love with the farmhouse at first sight.  He was on the rebound from London, money, structured living and any other symptom of predatory uptightness which came to mind.’  Horace is one of the middle class ‘foreigners’ who settle near Llanwygli, a Welsh mining village which has been dying quietly since the closure of the mines.  It is shut-off community which looks inwards and backwards.  Robert, the book’s narrator, has a foot in both camps.  He lived in the village as a child, his uncle is a man of standing there, he is still obsessively in love with his first cousin.  On the other hand he has lived in London for years, and the foreigners are his friends.  When people begin to think the village is to be flooded as a reservoir, all sorts of hell start breaking loose.  In an alarming, often hilarious atmosphere of chicanery, disaster, wild rumour and the revelation of a still more incredible truth, Robert finds there is also a crisis in himself which cannot be evaded.”