Books: Sinners & Sin-Eaters

THE WALK HOME (205 pp.)—Gwyn Jones—Norton ($3.95).

Wales in the 19th century was barren, poor, diseased and hagridden with superstition. It was, in short, picturesque but a tough place for Welshmen. Seen in retrospect by Welsh Novelist Jones, it remains determinedly picturesque but a hazardous place for novelists.

The walk of Novelist Jones's title refers to the picaresque progress of the book's hero across the width of Wales in search of the father who had abandoned him and his impoverished mother years before. The highway, like the highways of Fielding or Smollett, yields a complete...

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