The French Thing is a story about love, among other things, in mid-Wales, in the mid-1990s. It is a story about obsession, tribal divides and contested meanings, as well as about working, drinking and staying up late. It is about what can happen to people who inhabit a fractured landscape.
“When the wind was in the south, the sound of the guns on the artillery range would cross the intervening valleys quite clearly, sudden thuds like something being dropped upstairs, the rumble of furniture moved about in an attic. At night the orange parachute flares would rise in silent arcs into the darkness, and you would think to yourself: what are that lot up to?”
Located in an imaginary mid-Wales town, Llanfrychan, which fuses elements of Builth Wells, Llandrindod, Lampeter and Brecon, Chris Keil’s debut novel deals with the clash of cultures that was highlighted by the live export protests of the mid-90s.
English students, Welsh farmers, aging hippies, fading entrepreneurs and continental livestock dealers are brought together in the matter of an industry and the outrage it engendered. There is also infidelity and lust, and desperation at a way of life in a community where an individual’s every move is observed.
The French Thing looks at life in rural Wales without illusions or sentiment. Its farmers are real and suffering human beings, and their work is presented as an industry under almost intolerable strain. Although the nature of the changes being forced upon the countryside may have shifted in recent years, the pressures on small communities in terms of the lack of economic opportunities and the impact of external attitudes and moral codes remains true across Wales and beyond.
