Library of Wales: Make Room for the Jester

Sometimes compared to The Catcher in the Rye, this rediscovered novel of the 1960s has a similar haunting sense that the adult world is phony and threatening. The hero of the book, Ashton Vaughan, has come home after a long absence from his Welsh seaside town. A member of the notorious Vaughan family, he has become a hopeless alcoholic drifter, but he moves in with his brother, aloof and eccentric, who still lives in the family home. Slowly, as Ashton reaches out to his loyal friends in town, it becomes clear that a violent vendetta had forced him to run away from home.