List Of Writers
COLLINS, RICHARD
Email: richardtaliesin@hotmail.com
Richard Collins has been a farm labourer, gardener and estate worker. He lives with his family in west Wales. His first novel, The Land as Viewed from the Sea, was published by Seren Books in 2004 and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Welsh Book of the Year. His second novel, Overland (Seren, 2006), was published in 2006.
Reviews:
With respects The Land as Viewed from the Sea (Seren, 2004)
“…A compelling read, dreamlike and lifelike at the same time…”
Ali Smith, The Guardian
“…Fresh, surprising and ambitious, Richard Collins’ dark–hearted love story unfolds with immense narrative skill...”
Whitbread Awards Panel
“...An evocative story of dislocation and loss...”
The Daily Telegraph
“...A distinctive and distinguished achievement...”
Planet
Selected Publications:
The Land as Viewed from the Sea (Seren, 2004)
Overland (Seren, 2006)
The Land as Viewed from the Sea (Seren, 2004)
"Fresh, surprising and ambitious ... Richard Collins’ dark–hearted love story is a gripping tale that unfolds with immense narrative skill." - The Whitbread First Novel Award Judges. Richard Collins’ debut novel is a dreamlike meditation on land and sea and the illusory nature of love. Two friends work together on a smallholding: one allows the other to read the novel he is writing, The Land as Viewed from the Sea. As the novel unfolds, fiction begins to intrude upon reality, redefining the friends’ relationship, and threatening to change their lives forever.
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Overland (Seren, 2006)
Welcome to the happy-go-lucky world of 19-year-old Daniel Brownlow as he travels abroad after leaving school. Things ‘just happen’ to Dan, a Seventies teenager with a blue Mohican and the nickname ‘madness’.
In Overland – Richard Collins’ impressive follow-up to his debut novel The Land as Viewed from the Sea – Daniel’s journey to experience life heads in unexpected directions. Waiting for a bus he meets 44-year-old Oliver, a powerful man with a mysterious past, who needs his help. Dan agrees to spend ‘a couple of hours’ helping Oliver to catch up with his wife, who has just walked out on their family holiday, taking their car and two young children and heading home.What follows is a modern day Odyssey for both men; a journey home which swings from humour to terror, frustration to enlightenment, as they battle with events, themselves and Oliver’s former girlfriend, Caroline. Collins depicts with great delicacy the growing friendship between the two men at different stages of life’s journey.
This rich, deft, second novel again displays Collins’ precise imagery of landscape, from Europe’s snow-covered mountains to flat roads and cities and down to the coast, revealing the Aberystwyth-based former farm worker’s affinity with the land. Overland is a compulsive read as, like Dan, the reader needs to see the book through its unexpected, sometimes enjoyable, sometimes horrific, twists and turns, to its final destination.
To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click here