"After finding this seam of gold, miner Michael dreams that his son will be able to go to school, rather than join the other children who work in the mine, like blind, bald rodents unearthing themselves in search of scraps of candlelight. In the novel, which won the 2023 Betty Trask prize, everything closes in on Michael: lungs clog, tunnels collapse, horse-drawn narrowboats are attacked by robbers in the sooty dusk. It's a vivid reminder of the cost, in bodily suffering, of resource extraction."
"The Puma, Wiles's second novel, is also a serious and intense historical novel about a father with limited resources who attempts to break a cycle of violence. In the early 1950s Bernardo, a more morally ambiguous figure than Michael, has brought his young son James across the Atlantic from England to the house in the Patagonian woods where he himself grew up. James chatters blithely about becoming a footballer, but Bernardo is distracted. He thinks he sees shadows of his family walking in and out, reminding him of a childhood in which his eyes were wide and hurt by the twilight and he was barefooted and emptyhearted."
Miner Michael discovers a seam of gold and imagines his son attending school instead of joining child labour in the mine. The mining environment tightens: lungs clog, tunnels collapse and horse-drawn narrowboats face robber attacks, underlining bodily suffering caused by resource extraction. Bernardo moves with his son James to the Patagonian woods of his childhood but remains haunted by wartime violence from the blitz and service in Normandy. The narrative shifts between Patagonia, Liverpool and France to reveal past and present trauma. A sudden tragedy turns a search for home into a pursuit of revenge, displacing hurt onto landscape and interrogating masculinity.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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