Product Description

Set in the Welsh Borders in 1980, The Claude Glass charts an unlikely friendship between two neighbours: Robin, the seven year old son of English hippie sheep farmers, and Andrew, a child so neglected by his impoverished parents that he is left almost mute, seeking solace among the farm dogs. Exploring his parents’ semi-derelict farmhouse, Andrew finds an antique convex mirror – a Claude Glass – and, gazing into it, the two boys see their wild, rural landscape strangely ordered. But this comforting vision proves fragile as tensions and sexual jealousy rock the adult world around them. Written with a lyricism and freshness that echoes the work of Bruce Chatwin and Esther Freud, The Claude Glass draws you into the lives of its startling characters and their tarnished romance with nature.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #256379 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 201 pages

The Independent, 17 May 2007
This is a novel of compelling complexity of thought and feeling,
sustained by the authenticity of its rich detail.

About the Author
Tom Bullough grew up on a hill farm in Radnorshire – the setting of The Claude Glass – and now lives in the Cambrian mountains. He works as a music and travel writer, tractor driver, and helps run Tonic, a fair trade T-shirt business. This is his second novel; his first, a, was published by Sort Of Books in 2002.

Customer Reviews

Review from Independent on Sunday
The Claude Glass

By Tom Bullough

SORT OF BOOKS £6.99

Seven-year-old Robin lives on a Welsh hill farm. His parents, Tara and Adam, a couple of ex-hippies, work hard to keep the farm going but their relationship suffers in the process. Tara used to write poetry and have glamorous adventures like riding across India in the back of a truck with a group of musicians; now she ends up spending the day helping Adam drag a tractor out of a bog. Adam works crushingly long hours and grows increasingly impatient with dreamers like Robin's new schoolteacher, Huw. Tara sees qualities in Huw that Adam appears to be losing.

Not far from Robin's home is another, almost derelict farmhouse, where the psychotic farmer and his overmedicated wife have taken to living in a couple of filthy rooms. Their horribly neglected son, Andrew, spends his time with the farm dogs, roaming forgotten rooms and hiding in secret places where only animals go. In a grand room with a chandelier he finds a strange black mirror: an artist's Claude Glass, a device late 18th-century painters used to help them frame and simplify landscapes. Almost feral and barely able to speak, Andrew has no regular human companion until he meets Robin and the two boys become friends. Of course it's never the kind of friendship liable to prosper.

This often unnerving tale of romanticism suffocating beneath the weight of flinty pragmatism shows Bullough to be a very gifted writer indeed. In Andrew, he's created a truly memorable fictional character, but a word of warning: books rarely end as heartbreakingly as this one.

A lyrical and haunting study of childhood
Tom Bullough is an important new voice in British literature. Few writers can match his ability to evoke the lonely beauty and splendour of the Black Mountains. 'The Claude Glass' is a flawless and compelling study of childhood friendship. In lyrical, haunting prose, Bullough explores the darker side of life in the country, the difficult reality of trying to live out a rural idyll. Sensitive, profound and true, this is an important new novel by a hugely talented writer.

The book you must read this year
This book is an amazing story and one which i would recommend to you all. Set in the 1980s in rural Wales, I found myself stepping back to a supposedly idyllic place which however held horrors and deprivation too which seemed of an earlier age. I felt I was there as a fly on the wall, in the fields the barns, the school, the hills riding the tractors and waiting for the next surprise. The characters were there in front of me and I felt I could reach out and touch them. I have not been so moved by a story for a very long time. Please read this book and let us hope that another book by Tom Bullough will be there for us soon