Faith, Hope & Love

Owen, winner of the 2007 Welsh Book of the Year Award, makes his English-language debut with this scalding variation on his countryman Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night." At age 30, Alun Brady is still living at home with his parents in Cardiff. A degrading sexual initiation at the spiteful hands of his successful surgeon brother's wife, trouble with the Inland Revenue, and a role in a bank heist all serve to undermine his comfortable middle-class life. Meanwhile, his terminally ill grandfather, Paddy, who's desperate for release, begs Alun to help him die. Owen's savage indictment of Britain's welfare programs and its socialized medicine is strong stuff by itself, but it's the tragic personal story of Alun as he spirals full of self-inflicted guilt toward an ironic, violent conclusion that packs the real emotional punch. Owen unflinchingly reveals how easy it will be to "rage, rage, against the dying of the light." (Nov.)