Make Room for the Jester

With a foreword by Phillip Pullman, Make Room for the Jester is a haunting journey from the edge of childhood into a threatening adult world. Lew Morgan and Gladstone Williams are two friends trying to make sense of their lives over a long hot summer in the north Wales seaside town of Porthmawr. It will be a summer that changes everything. When the charming but drunk Ashton Vaughan returns home to Porthmawr the primeval swamp of respectability he triggers a chain reaction of ruin, disillusion and death which keeps the whole town bubbling for most of the summer. There's fraud, farce, drama, drunkenness, temperance, hysteria and tragedy. This Welsh take on The Catcher in the Rye is a remarkable and welcome rediscovery.