"Fluent first novel" - Times Literary Supplement

"Remarkable indeed. Gladstone is quite beautifully described and presented and everywhere there is evidence of the quality of the author’s mind" - The Times

Synopsis:

Lew Morgan and Gladstone Williams are two friends trying to make sense of their lives over a long hot summer in the north Wales seaside town of Porthmawr. It will be a summer that changes everything. When the charming but drunk Ashton Vaughan returns home to Porthmawr - the "primeval swamp of respectability" - he triggers a chain reaction of ruin, disillusion and death which keeps the whole town bubbling for most of the summer.

There's fraud, farce, drama, drunkenness, temperance, hysteria and tragedy in this work. This Welsh take on The Catcher in the Rye is a haunting journey from the edge of childhood into a threatening adult world. A remarkable and welcome rediscovery.

About the author:

Thomas Evan Jones was born in 1922 and brought up in Pwllheli, north Wales. He attended University College Bangor, where his studies were halted by World War Two and five years in the British Army. He found himself in France on D Day, and was later promoted from private to corporal and given a signal detachment in India and Burma. After demobilisation he completed his degree and teaching qualifications. In 1952 he took the position of lecturer in Liberal Studies at Leyland Motors Technical College in Lancashire, where he remained until his retirement. He married and was the father to two daughters.

His first novel, Make Room for the Jester, was published in 1964 in both the UK and the USA to much critical acclaim. It was followed in 1966 by The Ballad of Oliver Powell (published under the title The Man with the Talents in the USA), and in 1968 by his third and last novel, The Lost Boy. He published all his books under the name of Stead Jones. He died in 1985

Buy:

Buy Make Room For The Jester from the Parthian online bookstore for £8.99.

This title is also available as an ebook: http://thelibraryofwales.com/node/68