cover image In These Promiscuous Parts

In These Promiscuous Parts

Menna Gallie. St. Martin's Press, $15.95 (264pp) ISBN 978-0-312-42537-1

With a gritty benevolence, a native writer conveys the earthy ambiance of a little Welsh town where a lot goes on. When Rosie (named for Rosa Luxembourg) Kendrew, 40-ish, sexy, scholarly, tools up from Cambridge to holiday with her aging mother in Trenewydd, she easily slips into the quirky lifestyle of the locals. Her mother is the resident Communist, serene amongst the stirrings of the town's politics. There's salmon poaching, tippling in the pubs to keep the Welsh damp at bay, tilts with the police buffoons, ructions from the Welsh Language Society. The characters are colorfully expressive, and Gallie (Strike For a Kingdom; The Small Mine probes the rich comic vein of the ferociously independent Welsh, putting the rigors of their daily life in perspective. March 3