The Writers of Wales Database

HUGHES, TRISTAN

Tristan Hughes was born in Atikokan, Canada, where he lived for two years before moving to Wales. He was brought up around Llangoed, Ynys Mon. Tristan was educated at Ysgol David Hughes, Menai Bridge, the Universities of York and Edinburgh, and King’s College Cambridge, where he completed a PhD thesis on Pacific and American literature. His first published story won the Rhys Davies Short Story competition in 2002 and appeared in Ghosts of the Old Year (Parthian, 2002). He now lives in Biwmaris, Ynys Mon.

Send my Cold Bones Home (Parthian Books, 2006), was on the 2007 Wales Book of the Year Long List.

Reviews:
With respect to Revenant (Picador, 2008)

"…Hughes is a very good writer, if ’good writing’ has to do with precision, eloquence, beauty and passionately held belief…"
Times Literary Supplement

"…Pastoral, flinty and fierce..."
Independent


Selected Publications:
The Tower (Parthian, 2003)
The Strange Journeying of Johnny Ifor Jones (Parthian, 2005)
Send My Cold Bones Home (Parthian Books, 2006)
Revenant (Picador, 2008)
Eye Lake (Picador, 2011)

Revenant (Picador, 2008)

In a remote Welsh village by the sea, four friends grow up together. Plain but charismatic Del is the ringleader, unstoppable, supremely confident in her ability to get her own way. Neil, shy and stuttering, and Ricky, full of rage and loneliness, are misfits at school until Del takes them under her wing. Steph is the outsider, but she too is mesmerized by Del’s devil-may-care approach to life.

They hang around together – mucking about in the woods, searching for treasure on the seashore, doing dares, sharing cigarettes. Then, one terrible day, the gang is broken up for good.

Meeting ten years later in the now stagnating village, Neil, Ricky and Steph revisit their childhood haunts and re-live the memories that have cast a shadow over each of their lives. Del is, by turns, the beating heart at the centre of all their stories and a gaping absence.

Set against the backdrop of the northern Welsh coast, and told through the voices of Neil, Ricky and Steph – the children left behind – Revenant pieces together their memories of childhoods broken by desertion, absence and death, and uncovers the secrets and betrayals of childhood friendships, with thoughtful, shocking brilliance.

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