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A review by tommooney
Easy Meat by Rachel Trezise
5.0
I was 18 the first time I went to the South Wales valleys, in October 2004. Specifically, it was the Rhondda. I went back to my new uni girlfriend's family home in Tonypandy for the weekend, to meet her parents for the first time. After a couple of days eating heavy meals and slowly trying to charm them with my westcountry cheek, we set off back to university in Swansea. Five minutes after departing that typical valleys town, we edged over a ridge and drove a mountain road flanked by death-defying drops. Roaring waterfalls plundered down ancient rockfaces, sheep grazed lazily at the grassy roadside, the gulleys and gulches fell dramatically all around. I hadn't witnessed natural beauty like it. I kept asking her parents to stop and let me take photos on my disposable camera to show my dad. It was like I'd discovered some secret the Welsh were keeping from the English.
Over the next decade and more, I would go back to the Rhondda hundreds of times (we are now married with two children, though much of her family has now moved away from the area). Every occasion was bookended by the same glorious drive. The people were warm and friendly to a level I haven't encountered anywhere else. But, the longer I spent there, the more you could see this place was no Eden. The deprivation became more evident with each passing year. This was a place abandoned by industry, by employers, by politics.
Rachel Trezise's new novel, Easy Meat, brings this clash of beauty and abandonment to the fore. It follows a day in the life of Caleb Jenkins, an ex-reality TV star now working the boning line at a slaughterhouse to keep his family afloat. His family carpet business has gone bust and his parents and brother have had to move in with him.
This is no ordinary day either. 23 June, 2016. Brexit vote day.
Caleb negotiates his day with the resigned stoicism of the contemporary working class, while politics swirls all around him. His apathy on Brexit is evident, though he's surrounded by self-declared experts on the subject, as well as scores of European workers at the slaughterhouse. How can he not be apathetic? When would he have the time or inclination to educate himself about it? He's trapped by The Machine. As the day comes to a conclusion, the country is on the verge of a momentous decision and Caleb has hardly given it much thought.
Trezise has delivered a sublime portrait of Welsh working class life. She presents the clashing polarisation of the national moment with care and devoid of judgement, preferring to listen and understand rather than opine. Her ear for the rhythms and cadence of Valleys speak is excellent and she blends comic elements perfectly with the underlying bleakness of Caleb's situation. Running through it all, however, are the striving working class people, Welsh and European alike, just trying to make things better for themselves and their families; people used as tokenistic political pawns far too often in recent years.
This is the Brexit novel we've been waiting for.
Over the next decade and more, I would go back to the Rhondda hundreds of times (we are now married with two children, though much of her family has now moved away from the area). Every occasion was bookended by the same glorious drive. The people were warm and friendly to a level I haven't encountered anywhere else. But, the longer I spent there, the more you could see this place was no Eden. The deprivation became more evident with each passing year. This was a place abandoned by industry, by employers, by politics.
Rachel Trezise's new novel, Easy Meat, brings this clash of beauty and abandonment to the fore. It follows a day in the life of Caleb Jenkins, an ex-reality TV star now working the boning line at a slaughterhouse to keep his family afloat. His family carpet business has gone bust and his parents and brother have had to move in with him.
This is no ordinary day either. 23 June, 2016. Brexit vote day.
Caleb negotiates his day with the resigned stoicism of the contemporary working class, while politics swirls all around him. His apathy on Brexit is evident, though he's surrounded by self-declared experts on the subject, as well as scores of European workers at the slaughterhouse. How can he not be apathetic? When would he have the time or inclination to educate himself about it? He's trapped by The Machine. As the day comes to a conclusion, the country is on the verge of a momentous decision and Caleb has hardly given it much thought.
Trezise has delivered a sublime portrait of Welsh working class life. She presents the clashing polarisation of the national moment with care and devoid of judgement, preferring to listen and understand rather than opine. Her ear for the rhythms and cadence of Valleys speak is excellent and she blends comic elements perfectly with the underlying bleakness of Caleb's situation. Running through it all, however, are the striving working class people, Welsh and European alike, just trying to make things better for themselves and their families; people used as tokenistic political pawns far too often in recent years.
This is the Brexit novel we've been waiting for.