A thought provoking new novel by Llanvetherine-based author, Rhiannon Lewis, received a well-attended official launch at the Abergavenny branch of Waterstones this week.

Described by publishers, Y Lolfa as gripping female-focused dystopian thriller, The Significance of Swans began life as a prize-winning short story earning the coveted runner-up spot in the Aberystwyth University Prize section of the New Welsh Writing Awards 2019.

The theme of a lone woman’s struggle to make sense of a drastically altered world in which all those she knew are lost is a departure in genre from her previous novel, My Beautiful Imperial, which was based on the life of Rhiannon’s real-life great grand uncle - a sea captain from Cardigan, carrying mail and cargo up and down the Chilean coast in the latter years of the 19th Century.

Carolyn Hodges of Y Lolfa told the audience how rare it is for the company to publish a fiction novel in English, praising the author’s skills in capturing and holding the attention of the reader as well as her originality and attention to detail.

The Significance of Swans, ISBN: 9781800995765, is published by Y Lolfa and is available through bookshops or from https://www.ylolfa.com.

'The Significance of Swans' began life as a short story, and a successful one, coming second in the New Welsh Writing Awards in 2019 writes Bob Rogers

Author Rhiannon Lewis then expanded it into its current form as a novella, judging correctly that there was still more to tell. Readers might feel that a further expansion into a full novel would be a welcome step.

There are, throughout the narrative, teasing paths we never follow but which offer intrigue and the potential for vignettes and further dramatic conflicts for the story’s main protagonist, Aeronwy, to negotiate.

People are vanishing, first in dribs and drabs and then more collectively. Towns and cities are emptied, radios and TVs fall silent, streets are deserted and Aeronwy finds herself alone in a small town in southeast Wales.

With her partner among the vanished and her children out of touch in London, she decides to seek out her brother in West Wales. And there begins her long journey on foot.

Lewis is clearly familiar with her locations and is both original and insightful when it comes to describing the loneliness of Aeronwy’s trek in the humanless silence of once busy roads and bustling towns – a surreal memory we all share from the pandemic (Which the short story preceded).

The theme of being the last person on earth is not a new one and is often explained by the presence of plague or alien invasion, but the Significance of Swans is not a science fiction novel. There is no attempt to explain the inexplicable. Aeronwy refers to the supposed engineers of the disappearances merely as ‘Them’ or ‘They’ and any supposition of why she might have been spared is subsumed by the necessities of survival.

When she discovers another person squatting in the family home in West Wales, a new set of disturbing and challenging circumstances presented themselves to her. The man is called Blake and is instantly and profoundly unlikable. He has issues with ‘unpronounceable’ Welsh names and a predilection for killing Swans.

He travels around his empty fiefdom on a milk float which Aeronwy describes with onomatopoeic flair as his ‘click-hum’. She fears for her own life and when the usurper gets his condign comeuppance, she takes to the road again.

The significance of Swans is a quite charming and refreshingly different book. Faced with a dystopian scenario we are not presented with a gung-ho hero, teams of confused experts or any other literary stereotype, but with a middle-aged woman who, like probably all of us in such a situation, doesn't really know what to do or where to go, but takes the plunge and goes there anyway.

Rhiannon Lewis is proven teller of good stories. This book would make a splendid film or TV adaptation.