Mari Strachan

Mari Strachan (born 1945 in Harlech, Wales) is a Welsh novelist and librarian. Her first novel, The Earth Hums in B Flat (Canongate, 2009), works on one level as a detective story, while on another dealing with the problems of growing up in a small Welsh village in the 1950s, and more generally with the influence of the past on the present.[1]

Personal life

Mari Strachan was raised in a Welsh-speaking family in North-West Wales. Her father was a bricklayer and stonemason, while her mother, who had left school at 14, cleaned for a living. After leaving the Welsh-medium secondary school Ysgol Ardudwy in Harlech, she graduated in history and English from Cardiff University and then qualified as a chartered librarian, working as such until her retirement. She was 61 when her first novel appeared.[2]

Strachan and her husband live on a smallholding in Ceredigion, West Wales.[1] She says her children were "quite excited" by her success, and one of her grandchildren, credited at the front of her first novel, was delighted to see his name alongside its many translated languages. "I always write in English because I was educated in English although my first language is Welsh," she told an interviewer. "I find it very hard to write for adults in Welsh. I don't feel it's accurate enough. There is still a gap between spoken and written Welsh."[2]

Novels

Encouragement to take up novel-writing in retirement came from a Masters' Course at Manchester Metropolitan University, which "made me focus on my own writing" rather than "trying to imitate other writers whose books I admired."[3]

The 11-year-old protagonist Gwenni of The Earth Hums in B Flat, Strachan's first book, "is not based on a real person.... Sometimes I think that maybe she's the child I wish I had been. I grew up in the 1950s... and was taught that it was impolite to contradict or argue with anyone. Gwenni is not afraid to ask questions even when she knows it'll cause trouble for her, and she's not afraid to do what she believes is the right thing."[3]

Translation rights to it have been sold for at least twelve languages. American rights have also been sold, to Grove Atlantic. The Guardian noted in a review of it her "deft handling of a dark subject... both sober and sparkling." It was read as the BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime in April 2009, while being chosen for Waterstones' New Voices and winning an Amazon Rising Star award the same spring.

Its Scottish publisher Canongate Books issued her second novel, Blow on a Dead Man's Embers, in 2011. (An edition in 2012 appeared as Dead Man's Embers.)[4] It owes something to her grandfather's experience of shell shock in telling of a traumatised Welsh First World War returnee from the armed forces and his family, in "a distinctive and potent treatment" of the "lingering sorrow of war", according to The Times Literary Supplement.[1][3]

gollark: Well, because I dislike being creepily surveiled. Though I mostly don't go to much effort.
gollark: As far as I know ISPs can't see that you connect to your own LAN.
gollark: You may only ask dishonest questions.
gollark: VPNs prevent ISPs from seeing all this except possibly to some extent #3, but the VPN provider can still see it, and obviously whatever service you connect to has any information sent to it.
gollark: Anyway, with HTTPS being a thing basically everywhere and DNS over HTTPS existing, ISPs can only see:- unencrypted traffic from programs/services which don't use HTTPS or TLS- the *domains* you visit (*not* pages, and definitely not their contents, just domains) - DNS over HTTPS doesn't prevent this because as far as I know it's still in plaintext in HTTPS requestts- metadata about your connection/packets/whatever- also the IPs you visit, but the domains are arguably more useful anyway

References
  1. User Fusion Ltd (14 January 2019). "Wales Literature Exchange. Retrieved 14 January 2019". waleslitexchange.org. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
  2. WalesOnline (14 January 2019). "Mari Strachan on writing late in life". Wales Online. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
  3. BookBrowse (14 January 2019). "Mari Strachan author interview". bookbrowse.com. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
  4. "Dead Man's Embers – Mari Strachan – 9781847675323 – Allen & Unwin - Australia". allenandunwin.com. 14 January 2019. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
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