Where Now the Smile.... The Hymn Book, #2

Where Now the Smile... Hymn Book Volume IIIn the hills and housing estates around Caerphilly, three people remain bound by a childhood they cannot fully escape. Glen moves between the respectable life he has built with his wife and children and the damaged one he shares with Janine and Alun. Janine rarely leaves her flat, carrying a silence that those around her do not know how to reach. Alun still walks the old paths through the hills, leaving strange offerings among the trees, as if the land itself needs protecting.
As an elderly man goes missing and the quiet tensions of the town begin to surface, the past presses closer. Some things sink into the ground and stay there. Others keep rising. Set over a single month in a small Welsh town, Where Now the Smile... is a contemplative literary novella about memory, belonging, and the damage that resists being healed. For readers who appreciate the quiet intensity of Jon Fosse, the deep sense of place in the work of John Berger, and the emotional weight of John McGahern, this is a literary novel of memory and quiet persistence.