Maddocks, or how to discover America

This intriguing novel overlays two adventure stories. One concerns the Maddocks of the title, an adolescent in contemporary Wales who flees the humiliations of school and family life dominated by a despised stepfather and stepbrother in order to pursue an obsession with what lies beyond the westermost edge of Europe. The second story is about Madog, a young adventurer in medieval Wales who takes to the sea in order to escape the treacheries of feudal strife and the disappointment at being spurned by his natural father, a brutal, free-seeding warlord. Madog is obsessed with the St Branden myth, and in both stories, faith in the power of an immaculate Atlantic to salve troubled souls pulls the heroes towards dangers greater but more glorious than those they leave behind. The author makes his prose work too hard. There are frequent shifts of tense and narrator and redundant similes abound. In spite of this and the somewhat improbably emmolient resolution, the story is told with effective dash and vividness. It should fascinate every young person with dreams of doing a runner.