The Long Field: Wales and the Presence of Absence, a Memoir

Artist Petro (Travel in an Old Tongue) explores a wide range of subjects, including her queerness, her father’s illness, and surviving a train crash, in this excellent memoir. An American, Petro first visited Wales as a student in the 1980s and made the country her permanent home after completing a master’s degree there. As she dug into Welsh culture, she became fascinated with “hiraeth,” a word that has no precise English translation, but most closely means “long field” and refers to a sense of longing for something unattainable. Using hiraeth as a lens and an access point, Petro examines the people and places she’s longed for throughout her own life. The book’s most affecting sections focus on her long-term relationship with her partner, Marguerite, who provided Petro with “the kind of expansive love and happiness that’s the basis of all art and every happiness in the world,” despite their on and off connection, which Petro renders in searing, self-aware detail. She’s equally adept at lighter moments, as when she’s caught in a Kafkaesque saga, before she lived in Wales permanently, while seeking to enter the country to teach a writing workshop without a work visa and deemed a “grave criminal.” Wonderful turns of phrase (“A short field is easily crossed. A long field separates you from what you love on the other side. It’s the quintessential, ancient incarnation of absence”) and openhearted candor make this sing. (Aug.)