A spellbinding and timeless tale of isolation, the power of grief and the pull of home.
Carys Davies is the author of Some New Ambush and The Redemption of Galen Pike, published in one volume by Text as The Travellers and Other Stories. She won the 2015 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Born in Wales, she lives in Lancaster in northwest England.
‘Carys Davies deserves every accolade she has received.’
*Elizabeth Harrower*
‘Wonderful.’
*Sarah Jessica Parker*
‘Davies’ slim, complex, and achingly beautiful first novel is a
sculpture of daring shifts and provocative symmetries welded
together by lyrical, fast-paced prose…A masterful first novel—the
sort of book that warms even as it devastates, that forces serious
reflection and yet charms.’
*Kirkus (starred review)*
'West has all the stark power and immediacy of a folk-tale or a
legend. It is also structured with great artistry, a beguiling
sense of form and pace, and a depth in the way the characters are
created, making clear that Carys Davies is a writer of immense
talent.'
*Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn and House of Names*
'Menace and mordant wit are the blood that runs through these
veins, but there's a pulse of wonder in Carys Davies' West. She
sees the world and its inhabitants both as we hope they are and as
we fear that they might be. An audacious and enigmatic debut of
thrilling dimensions, and a reminder of fiction's
possibilities.'
*Akhil Sharma, author of Family Life and A Life of Adventure and
Delight*
'A story of determination, betrayal, folly, and reckless hope
written in the grand tradition of the pioneers. You enter the
familiar American frontier and shortly are convinced, with Davies'
hero, that the mammoths of the Pleistocene still shyly roam the
Plains. The seams between imagination and history in this
extraordinary story are invisible. I believed every word.'
*Salvatore Scibona, author of The End*
'West is a journey and a wonder. A man leaves what he loves and
goes west in search of the amazing. A story concerned with value
and language, love and absence, life and death. A debut of real
distinction.'
*Bernard MacLaverty, author of Midwinter Break and Cal*
‘To read Carys Davies’ West is to encounter a myth, or a potent
dream—a narrative at once new and timeless. Exquisite, continent,
utterly vivid, this short novel will live on in your imagination
long after you read the last page.’
*Claire Messud*
‘West proves what in-the-know lovers of her short stories have
already been trumpeting: Carys Davies is a deft, audacious
visionary, a master of the form. In West, she breaks open our
fascination with fated journeys and the irrepressible draw of the
unknown, imbuing the American landscape with her own rare magic,
twisting the heart as few others can, brilliantly navigating the
tension between narrative minimalism and imaginative opulence.’
*Téa Obreht*
‘West’s strength lies in belief, and wonder, and the simple pure
clarity of that in an incomprehensible world.’
*Cynan Jones*
‘Menace and mordant wit are the blood that runs through these
veins, but there’s a pulse of wonder in Carys Davies’ West. She
sees the world and its inhabitants both as we hope they are and as
we fear they might be. An audacious and enigmatic debut of
thrilling dimensions, and a reminder of fiction’s
possibilities.’
*Akhil Sharma*
‘Brief and brilliant…[I]t is that rare thing, an historical novel
that gives no hint of the research on which it is constructed but
seems to have arisen effortlessly out of a time and a place.’
*Penelope Lively*
‘Bold and lyrical…West is an exquisite debut that’s short in length
but steeped in the tall tales of American myth.’
*Lit Hub*
‘One of the most haunting and beautifully crafted novels I have
read in a long time…Davies has produced something quite wonderful
in West. This is a gently seductive book, one that entrances right
to its cleverly conceived end.’
*Sunday Times*
‘This small book is a visionary and beautiful fable of discovery
and dreaming, along with some harsh truths about the reality of
American history and its dreamers’ lives…the writing is
astonishing, right to the heart-stopping end.’
*Sydney Morning Herald*
‘Not a word is wasted; the canvas is as wide as [Davies’] brush is
fine...She holds comedy and tragedy in equal, delicate
balance...There are many worlds to explore within this deceptively
short book, which gallops towards its conclusion with a mythic
inevitability. You won’t be able to turn back.’
*Guardian*
‘Slender, stark and utterly mesmerising…The language, lyrical yet
pared down, conveys complicated feelings of grief, guilt, sadness
and a strange kind of wonder.’
*Mail on Sunday*
‘This exquisite historical novel of life on the American frontier
may be only 150 pages long but boy, does it pack a punch…Tense,
captivating and whittled to perfection.’
*Metro*
‘A haunting, beautifully weighted tale, so skilfully and sparely
told that it is hard to believe Davies hasn’t published anything at
length before.’
*London Evening Standard*
‘Beautifully sad…Davies’ lapidary prose is a marvel—she creates
worlds in a few deft pen strokes.’
*The Times*
‘Davies’ brilliant gem of a novel glints with sadness and a sombre
kind of wonder.’
*Sunday Express*
‘There’s something of Don Quixote about Bellman…[West’s] characters
never feel less than fully human, the world they inhabit never less
than fully imagined, and for its final third it’s a real
page-turner, too. A magnificent achievement.’
*Scotsman*
‘Beautifully written…West has the wisdom and lyrical prose of a
folk tale whose power grips the reader from the beginning and
demands a single-session read…Steinbeck is an obvious
comparison.’
*Irish Times*
‘A lithe yet lyrical meditation on obsession, violence and the yoke
of family…Davies conjures the frontier ethos and landscape in spare
yet elegant prose. Her imagery and cadences glide beautifully into
place…From a distance, West looks like a slim fable; but a closer
view reveals a peculiarly American self-delusion, opening up like a
vast prairie. Davies is an audaciously talented writer to
watch.’
*Star Tribune*
‘A debut novel to savour…Small but perfectly formed.’
*The Times *
‘This quick, compelling read is a novel about family commitments,
small-town agitations and the irresistible, fanatic pull of the
unknown.’
*Shelf Awareness*
‘[A] small jewel of a debut novel…A hauntingly beautiful book.’
*Australian Financial Review*
‘West is both beautifully crafted and entrances to its
cleverly conceived end.’
*The Times*
‘Miraculous…So crisply and concisely written, and so warm and human
in its economy, that it shames the behemoths sitting beside it on
the nation’s bookshop shelves. It’s a book you can read in a day
and that will resonate all year long in your head.’
*Sunday Times (UK)*
‘This novel captured my attention in a way no other story has for
years...West is a brief story with not a word
wasted…[It] is like being drawn into an intricately detailed
Breughel painting.’
*StuffNZ*
‘The beautiful, rapid way Davies writes is simple and grounded,
everything sits where it should.’
*Lifted Brow*
‘Immensely engaging and brilliantly written, this short debut novel
is a miniature masterpiece.’
*Best Fiction of 2018, Sunday Times UK*
'I believe that Davies has achieved something striking in this
small volume: as Frederick Jackson Turner viewed American history
through the lens of the frontier, she has examined the power — and
perhaps failure — of storytelling through the lens of the American
West.’
*Favourite Books of 2018, Washington Post*
'It really is a terrific novel...This book...knocked us out like a
roundhouse punch to the muzzle.'
*Bookmunch*
‘An exquisite, haunting tale of an unlikely hero in 19th-century
America.’
*The Times*
‘Dazzling.’
*Saturday Paper*
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