UNCLAY by T.F. Powys

With an Introduction by Professor John Gray*

Price £14.99

A paperback of 352 pages

ISBN-10: 0955152364 

ISBN-13: 9780955152368

Dimensions: 210x140mm

  Published: 11 July 2008  

With a deceptively simple plot and written in a deceptively simple style perhaps not surprisingly with T. F. Powys this is the author's most complex novel and arguably his most rewarding.   

In the remote Dorset village of East Chaldon, T.F. POWYS (1875-1953) wrote a steady succession of novels, novellas, fables and short stories which first appeared in print during the 1920’s and early 1930’s. These tales of startling originality and strange beauty offer wry observations on the human condition, the enigma of God, and arresting insights into the nature of good and evil, infused with subtle and dark humour of the rarest vintage.

In this, the author's final masterpiece, John Death arrives in the obscure Dorset village of Little Dodder with instructions to ‘unclay’ two of its inhabitants. Unfortunately for him, Death loses the divine chit bearing the names of the doomed pair, and is obliged to stay in Little Dodder until he finds it. And in the course of that summer he acquires a taste for life... Despite several grim scenes, Unclay's final message is unexpectedly light-hearted. A major 20^th Century novel.

‘The last full-length novel of T. F. Powys, Unclay is the summation of his life’s work. Though not without precedents, the manner and the substance of this strange, compelling, not always comfortable book are uniquely his own … Theodore Powys is a religious writer without any vestige of orthodox belief, a dark poet who celebrates passing beauty and a stark realist who is also a supreme fabulist. Unless one unlocks these paradoxes one cannot fully understand his work, or appreciate the rare delights it contains.’

– From the Introduction by John Gray*

"The book is set in a rural village, drawing deeply on East Chaldon, where Powys lived for many years. This creates a hermetically sealed world, where Powys can develop an intense and allegorical ethos. It is a world with traditional, even feudal, relationships, laced with extraordinary suppressed violence and strange sexual relationships. This is by no means a cosy English village. Violence breaks through in the brutal beating of a dog, in what amounts to a domestic rape scene.

However, it is also a deeply comic novel. Powys comes alive in writing about the innocent clergyman Mr Hayhoe and the local squire Lord Bullman, as well as the villagers with their strange obsessions – like the woman who thinks she is a camel and the man who thinks nut trees will defend him from love. The main character of the book is Death himself – John Death, dressed in smart clothes and frequently carrying a scythe, who gets the job as the local gravedigger! Death is a direct allegorical character, and it is daring of an author to write so directly, to give his positive message that death is a release from the pains of life.

The clergyman Mr Hayhoe meets Mr Death in a country lane scratching his head looking for something he has lost. Ludicrously, Mr Hayhoe wonders if he is an insurance agent, but he flashes darkness from his eyes and causes a “curious feeling of cold dread”. Mr Death has lost a vital parchment which God has given him with orders to kill two people in the village – but Powys uses the curious and evocative word “unclay” for his task of relieving people from the sad pains and burdens of life and love." – An excerpt from a review by John Vernon

[bagg theatre in London is currently developing a new production of UNCLAY]

UNCLAY

T.F. Powys

Softback £14.99

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