The Village of Little Comely-on-the-Marsh
- Publisher
- Baronel Books
- Initial publish date
- Sep 2020
- Category
- Satire, Humorous
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780987750372
- Publish Date
- Sep 2020
- List Price
- $17.07
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
The Village of Little Comely-on-the-Marsh deals with diversity, cultural and religious issues, to name but a few, in today’s society. The story weaves around the lives of eccentric Welsh people living in a small village somewhere in the south of France exclusively in their sheltered world. The book facetiously addresses cultural diversity concerns that go beyond the stereotypes of British and French society. The object of the story, written with humour and a romantic slant, is to demonstrate that we are all equal, irrespective of where one comes from.
About the author
Contributor Notes
Alan L. Simons is an author, writer, and social advocate. He was born and educated in London, England, where he worked for various newspapers before immigrating to Canada. As a diplomat, he served as the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Rwanda to Canada, in the post-genocide era. He lectures and writes on issues relating to religion in politics, antisemitism, intolerance, hate, Islamophobia, conflict, and terrorism.
Excerpt: The Village of Little Comely-on-the-Marsh (by (author) Alan L. Simons)
"About 20 kilometres from Luc-en-Diois, on the river Drôme, and about 11 kilometres from La Motte-Chalançon, located in the department Drôme, in the south of France, somewhere lies the village of Little Comely-on-the-Marsh. You won’t find Little Comely-on-the-Marsh located on any map. Nor will you find any reference to it in any of the libraries in Valence or Gap. If you were to ask the residents of Luc-en-Diois or La Motte-Chalançon about it, they probably would deny its existence, mumbling under their breath something that sounded much like: "Va te faire cuire un oeuf!" You see, for all intent and purposes, Little Comely-on-the-Marsh is, well, in the wrong place. It shouldn’t even exist No one knows for sure how the village acquired its name, or where its 347 Welsh inhabitants, plus 115 cats, 143 dogs, one horse, two pigs, a milking cow and four sheep came from. It seems there were some stories about the Romans bringing the Welsh over in the 5th Century to tend their sheep. The Romans a few centuries later became bored with the area and left having dismissed the local French wineries as, “Est autem peius urinae felium,” (It’s worse than cat’s urine), leaving behind their Welsh shepherds to suffer from drinking the worst wine in the Empire. But this was just hearsay, handed down from century to century by the villagers. There it was."
Editorial Reviews
Canadian Jewish Record
Dec. 16, 2020
(2020), By Alan Simons
By RALPH WINTROB
So here’s the conceit: A sturdy band of Welshmen, the progeny of intrepid pioneers, have established themselves in an isolated village in the south of France. They eschew any contact with the locals, and live as if they have never left Wales.
What happens when a stranger, injured in a car accident, is brought to the village to recover? Of course, he becomes an instant curiosity, and turns the village inside out and upside down, especially when the town elders have to determine what to do with him when he recovers.
And let me tell you, the ending is a total surprise.
So what’s the Jewish connection, you may ask? Well, that’s part of the surprise. Author Alan Simons has a Jewish affairs website read worldwide. And he has a long record of Jewish organizational activism and leadership in the Toronto community. He’s also the author of several books, for all ages. But more to the point, what does a nice Jewish lad like Simons, born and bred in London, know about Welsh village life or the jaw-breaking Welsh language for that matter? It turns out he had relatives who were shopkeepers in just such places, and he used to visit when he was a kid. Obviously, something stuck.
Simons’ characters are delightfully loopy, the product no doubt of generations of inbreeding. They are not so loopy that we can’t identify with them, and Simons spends a good part of the book elaborating on their peculiar ways.
Like one of the town councillors, who is accompanied everywhere he goes by a blown-up balloon of a blowsy partner attached to his ankle and waist, but of course is a real person to him. And would you believe nobody in the village bats an eyelash at such behavior? He turns out to be another interloper. How did he integrate so well? That’s what we find out…at the end.
Speaking of the town council, it meets frequently at the local pub-restaurant for a full Welsh breakfast, described in detail. It takes up so much of their meeting that not much in the way of town business is ever accomplished. But what a breakfast!
The book is less than 100 pages and in that small space, we have hived off to another world, like the intruding stranger in the story, and like him, with our heads swirling. We’re more than engaged. We come away imagining the story as a staged farce, or an animated Disney version, vying for which part we’d like to play ourselves.
It just sends our imaginations spinning, and I mean for any age level. After all, the characters are all adults – kind of. And in fact, Simons has promised us a sequel, if the book finds its audience, and lets him know they want more.
