Non-return by Dai Vaughan

Non-Return

I read this book following a review in Planet  "The International Magazine for Wales" which is a major source of my reading alongside the book reviews in the Church Times (these two plus Amazon do a lot of damage to my bank balance!).

The structure of the book adds to the interest - with every other chapter breaking away from the main narrative and being at one level a short story in itself and at another overlaping with some aspect of the that main narrative.  These chapters' alternative voices give relief to the otherwise rather self absorbed emotional drama of the main narrator (relief both in the sense of as a rest from it and also by adding depth to it).  

The narrator begins as an apprentice draughtsman in the 50s and the descriptions of the drawing office leave you, even a child of the 80s like me, with a vivid sense of nostalgia for a lost and dimly remembered analogue age, when he muses that "that's always to a degree the magic of railway travel where... you can't be reached on the telephone" you could almost be tempted to weep for what we have losted even in the 'quiet' coach (and, yes, I do see the irony in blogging nostalgically about the analogue past!).

He begins wrestling with the youthful search for identity and yet, as we journey with him through the decades, we discover that the search goes on and at the end of the book, in retirement, we find that he is still wrestling with that same search for identity.  This could be disheartening and yet here it is somehow life affirming - it give us all permission to go on searching - and it avoids the trap of offering a tidy ending.  Another interesting aspect of his journey comes when his wife joins the Greenham Women's Camp, and how he negoiates a relationship with that cause (the content of the cause is not important - it could be any deeply held conviction of a partner).  He is always going to be an outsider from that part of her life and yet he searches for ways to be a part of it, to show support and yet reconciling himself to the role of an outsider as it becomes clear that it is only from this position that you can genuinely share in someone's passion without trampling on it and making it yours not their. This all makes for a very absorbing and enjoyable read.