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Overview
Little did Aldous Jones know when he careened over his bicycle handlebars back in 1955, landing next to farmer Evans’s field, that it would turn into the idyllic start to a series of camping holidays in that same field. With Gerard Woodward’s deadpan wit and poignant evocation, August encapsulates the portrait of the Joneses and their growing family. Strangely enough, the rural site seems to change in conjunction with their city life, creating a parallel universe instead of a getaway. The Jones family also is featured in I’ll Go to Bed at Noon and A Curious Earth.
Synopsis
Shortlisted for the Whitbread Award, August is the life of a family through fifteen summer trips to Wales.
Publishers Weekly
Shortlisted for the Whitbread in 2001, Woodward's novel is the first in a trilogy focusing on the expansive, deeply troubled Jones family. (The books have been published out of sequence in the U.S.) An accident on a Welsh bicycling tour in 1955 leads Aldous Jones to discover the farm that will be the site of subsequent holidays. Every summer that follows, Aldous pitches tents for his rapidly burgeoning young family in the pastures of the good-natured, seemingly unchangeable Evans family, which serves as an annual mirror for the Joneses. Alas, Jones family life, despite its simple joys of mountain climbing, practical jokes and bicycling, is not nearly so idyllic as among the Evans clan. Eldest Jones son Janus, a brilliant pianist, develops dark fixations and antisocial tendencies. Aldous's wife, Colette, originally a vivacious, nurturing mother, rapidly descends into drug use. Quiet, unassuming Aldous, the figure at the eye of so much drama, becomes the novel's most compelling character only near its anticlimactic, elegiac end. Woodward's vision of family life is bleak indeed; although tempered by moments of levity, whimsy and descriptions of the lovely landscape, the narrative is virtually devoid of solace or redemption, finding only heartbreak in familial evolution. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Shortlisted for the Whitbread in 2001, Woodward's novel is the first in a trilogy focusing on the expansive, deeply troubled Jones family. (The books have been published out of sequence in the U.S.) An accident on a Welsh bicycling tour in 1955 leads Aldous Jones to discover the farm that will be the site of subsequent holidays. Every summer that follows, Aldous pitches tents for his rapidly burgeoning young family in the pastures of the good-natured, seemingly unchangeable Evans family, which serves as an annual mirror for the Joneses. Alas, Jones family life, despite its simple joys of mountain climbing, practical jokes and bicycling, is not nearly so idyllic as among the Evans clan. Eldest Jones son Janus, a brilliant pianist, develops dark fixations and antisocial tendencies. Aldous's wife, Colette, originally a vivacious, nurturing mother, rapidly descends into drug use. Quiet, unassuming Aldous, the figure at the eye of so much drama, becomes the novel's most compelling character only near its anticlimactic, elegiac end. Woodward's vision of family life is bleak indeed; although tempered by moments of levity, whimsy and descriptions of the lovely landscape, the narrative is virtually devoid of solace or redemption, finding only heartbreak in familial evolution. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Library Journal
While scouting about Wales on location for a family holiday, Aldous Jones is fortuitously knocked off his bicycle and into the compassionate hands of tenant farmer Hugh Evans. It is immediately obvious that he has found his place. Setting up camp in a tent in the middle of a field, Aldous, wife Colette, and their growing family delight in the farm rituals, the proximity to beaches, and the chance to escape their hot London home. From the Fifties on, their annual summer returns mark the rise and fall of the family fortunes. The great musical promise shown by eldest son Janus never materializes, and he begins to unravel mentally by his late teens. Soon after, Colette loses her own grip on reality when her mother dies and guilt envelops her. Nevertheless, the Joneses continue to pack up their tent each August and return to Wales. Shortlisted for the Whitbread in 2001, this affecting work is the first in a trilogy published out of sequence in North America; readers of the very charming sequel, A Curious Earth, will be pleased to learn how the quirky Jones family came by their eccentricities. Recommended for public libraries.
—Barbara Love