Faith, Hope and Love - Llwyd Owen

“Well paced, tightly plotted...[Owen] holds a magnifying glass to the middle classes to highlight their dark underbelly.... an unconventional thriller that will linger long in the memory.” - Lloyd Jones, McKitterick winner Alun Brady is a bit of a mummy’s boy: he is facing his 30th birthday and still lives in his parents’ cushy, middle class suburban Cardiff home. But when his mischievous, self-educated, warm grandfather Paddy makes his deathbed in their spare bedroom and pleads with Alun to help him die earlier than nature will let him, Alun’s makes a decision that turns his world and his values upside down. Upon his release from jail for euthanasia, Alun’s world looks a lot different. His parents have since died and an affair with his brother’s wife prior to his spell inside, leaves him alone, without a family, and readjusting to a new life of poverty on the streets of Cardiff. Surrounding himself with ‘friends’ from Cardiff’s underbelly, Alun find himself embroiled in a crime, with tragic consequences. Shifting in time and cutting across the social classes of Cardiff, Faith, Hope and Love is a superbly plotted, pacey, urban thriller, brilliantly evoking the city of Cardiff, and authentically exploring notions of memory and identity. Here, translated and adapted by the bi-lingual author Llwyd Owen, the original Welsh-language version of Faith, Hope and Love was winner of the Welsh Book of the Year, 2007. The novel, Llwyd Owen’s first one in English, has been selected as Book of the Month for June in Wales’ independent bookshops. Faith, Hope and Love will be launched in Cardiff at Gwdihw bar, Guildford Crescent, at 7.30pm, with readings, late bar and music from The Gentle Good and The Garden of Edam. Llwyd Owen is an award-winning Welsh and English-language fiction author born in Cardiff in 1977. His rising cult following in Wales stems from his lively use of street language and his exploration of some of society’s less visible characters – prostitutes, pimps, and criminals, to name a few. As well as publishing four highly-acclaimed Welsh language novels, he is also a published poet and photographer and has presented his own television documentary on S4C on the Cardiff art scene in 2008. His home town of Cardiff, where he currently lives with his wife and daughter, provides the inspiration for a lot of his work. When he is not writing, he works as a part-time translator. Available from 13/05/2010