Naxos AudioBooks is proud to be bringing Francis Brett Young (1884-1964) back into the literary limelight. A justly celebrated writer in his time, he drew on his military and medical experience as well as his acute environmental observations to create authentically detailed and poetically rich novels of profound emotional depth. The coal-mining and heavy industry of the Black Country in the West Midlands, observed by the author as a boy, imbue his 'Mercian' novels. He creates a sense of place as evocative as Thomas Hardy's Wessex and his characters are deeply human - flawed, passionate, and unforgettable. After her mother's death and her father's remarriage, Claerwen Lydiatt finds herself in the austere surroundings of Pen House with her grandfather and Aunt Cathie. Drawn to her glamorous neighbours, the Hingstons, and with solicitor Dudley Wilburn in the wings, Clare will not be contained; she wants to feel the wind in her hair and find out who she is. Portrait of Clare features, according to the author, 'a normal and (possibly) a rather silly woman moving quite unimportantly across the West Midland landscape' - but, like a simple Beethovenian theme, this powers an extraordinary, sophisticated and very moving work. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1927.
"Justin Avoth has the voice of England. He just does. And herethat voice embodies a literary world lost between Hardy and Hemingway, when an orphaned adolescent is left with a dour, very Victorian aunt and a grim, miserly grandfather. Clare goes on to find true love, suffer a devastating loss, and carve out her own identity surrounded by melodramatic in-laws, horseless carriages, and prying clergy. Avoth is at his best narrating the detailed, breathless descriptions of the West Midlands, and he is especially vivid when he gives voice to Clare's maturation as a woman of means and mother of a son wounded in battle.
Published in 1927, this lost gem connects the gilded voice of the Edwardian age with the devastation and carnage of WWI."
