On the Black Hill
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| On the Black Hill | |
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| Author | Bruce Chatwin |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Vintage Classics |
| Publication date | 1982 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 272 |
| ISBN | ISBN 978-0099769712 |
On the Black Hill is a novel by Bruce Chatwin published in 1982 and winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for that year. In 1987 it was made into a film, directed by Andrew Grieve.
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[edit] Plot summary
The novel's setting is the border of England and Wales in Herefordshire and / or Monmouthshire. In the early pages we are told the border runs through the very farmhouse, but everything else in the book strongly suggests a Welsh setting. Culturally the central characters are Welshmen, with the surname Jones. There are a number of references to Radnorshire, but the landscape of the book is also suggestive of the Black Mountains of North Monmouthshire.
The story is told through the technique of flashback, and portrays the lives of twin brothers, Lewis and Benjamin Jones, on their isolated upland farm called The Vision. The twins develop a bond that is shown throughout the novel as very special. Lewis is portrayed as the stronger more masculine or dominant twin, whereas Benjamin is the more feminine or intuitive one, both in appearance and in the tasks which he does around the house. He seems to be constantly drawn to his mother's side while she is alive, and there is also a suggestion of more than a brotherly love toward his twin Lewis.
Lewis is the one who wants to break free but Benjamin joins the army at the time of the Great War but his efforts are frustrated by his family ties and the indefinable, unbreakable tie to the land. Chatwin also tells the reader of the brutality involved in farming at the time in this area. Amos, the father of the two twins, shows how his day-to-day job has brutalised his once caring and loving attitude, and we see this later in the novel when he hits his wife Mary on the temple with the book she is reading - Wuthering Heights. A jealous man attacks his wife with the very material that shows her intelligence; he feels threatened by this, feeling that the man is supposed to be the head of the family in all things, and he feels anger because of his limited education.
On the Black Hill is a novel which portrays themes such as unrequited love, sexual repression and confusion, social, religious and cultural repression, hate and the historic social values of that era, as is shown when Amos finds out that his daughter Rebecca has become pregnant by an Irishman. His religious fanaticism, social pressure, economic forces and an inablity to express love results in him throwing her out of the household, and she is not mentioned in the novel again until the latter part.
The setting is quite clearly the Black Mountains to the east of Hay on Wye. Both Hay and Hereford are easily identified from references in the book. The fictional farm is probably located off the Gospel Pass up and beyond Llanthony Abbey.
[edit] Location
N.B. On the Ordnance Survey map, 'Abergavenny and the Black Mountains, Wales sheet 161' (1:50,000 series) and even better depicted on the more detailed 1:25,000 series at grid reference SO264310, you will be able to see a real farm called The Vision Farm, situated in the Llanthony valley, also known as the Vale of Ewyas, on the Welsh side of the border, just below Capel-y-ffin. The Black Hill itself is shown on the same map at grid reference SO275348, just a little to the north, towards Craswall, and refers to a well known ridge descending very steeply from the very long Hatterall Hill ridge (which forms the England / Wales border) and carries Offas Dyke footpath on it, down into the fields of Herefordshire, and on the English side. The Black Hill is known locally as 'The Cat's Back' as viewed from Herefordshire it looks like a crouching cat about to pounce. Chatwin amalgamated reality with his research amongst the local indigenous populace in the time he researched the book, interweaving fact and fiction, gossip, locations, stories and social history.
[edit] Prizes
The book was awarded the 1982 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award (which raises a question over the status of The Viceroy of Ouidah).
[edit] Adaptation
On The Black Hill was adapted for the stage in 1986 and into a film in 1987.
