How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn

I read this book years ago, and remembered almost nothing about it except for the fact that I seemed to like it. When I started rereading it, I was extremely impressed, but I got steadily less and less so as the book went on. Its faults emerge more and more as it progresses, which is unfortunate, since it starts out really strong. I know that it's attracted criticism in recent years when it was discovered that the author pretended to be Welsh (and his last name wasn't even Llewellyn), and was attacked for his conservative stance. However, leaving politics aside, Llewellyn (or whatever his name actually is), has an absolutely staggering gift for conjuring entire worlds out of material objects. This novel, especially the beginning, describes objects, interiors and buildings in a fantastically touching way, I was almost crying as I was reading it because it was so moving. Whereas by the end, the book becomes overwhelmed by moralising and cheap sentimentality, the beginning conjures a vision of a bygone world with the most exquisite nostalgia and love through the details of everyday life. The plot really isn't the strong suit in this book, it's mostly picaresque, centering on various celebrations of events such as weddings, family successes, and festivals, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how old the narrator was in any part of the book. Some of it is painfully overdramatic and ridiculous (I was almost screaming with laughter at the narrator's description of getting his first erection, it was too outrageously earnest for words) and I don't want to even get started on the horrendous sexism (although I image that it is in fact a good depiction of attitudes in a rural community). It is horribly conservative and too sober and intense about many things. I also could not understand why the narrator, who has a chance to go qualify for Oxford and leave to go into a decent profession, chooses to remain at home and become first a miner, then a carpenter. I can understand that he loves the land and his family, but everything has its limits, and in the conditions he describes, it was sheer madness to not attempt to leave. It also seemed to me that the story ended rather abruptly, and the author never tied up all the strands that he started at the beginning, as if he had meant it to be a more ambitious account, but ran out of time or inspiration. But I can forgive almost everything bad about the novel for the incredible vividness and aliveness (if that makes sense) of the material world in it.