Review by New York Times Review
At the age of 6, Aeronwy Thomas moved with her father, the poet Dylan Thomas, and her mother, Caitlin, to the coastal Welsh village of Laugharne. In this memoir, she portrays a chaotic childhood with unsentimental grace. (She died in 2009, shortly before this book was published in the United Kingdom.) The routine of summer days spent boating and gathering cockles is shattered by her parents' alcohol-fueled fights, which involved screaming, rolling on the floor and, once, the flinging of green toothpaste. Her mother would later say the couple were as surprised as anyone when reconciliation followed their rows. Caitlin Thomas, who liked to skinny-dip and turn cartwheels in a skirt, is the strongest presence here. She kept Dylan to a disciplined schedule as he wrote "Under Milk Wood." He was allowed to visit the local hotel for gossip and the crossword in the morning, but at 2 p.m. he had to be in his writing shed -and his wife locked him in if necessary. When he was let out every evening, the couple went to the pub. Dylan, a careless yet playful parent who read to Aeronwy on bath night, merely haunts the book. His characterization is blurry, and sometimes his daughter's prose is, too; it reads as if written by an admiring, serious student. But her memories, if muted, can nevertheless be touching. She was sent away to school when she was 10, the same year her father died in New York. Caitlin, who accompanied his body back to Laugharne ("His hands were still the same," Aeronwy recalls her saying, "narrow like fish fins, 'like yours but useless'"), was relieved to discover that the last letter she had sent to Dylan, telling him that their marriage was over, had never been delivered.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 24, 2010]