Love, mystery and lots of Welsh words. In this sometimes charming, sometimes gritty story, Jones presents us with entirely believable characters and engaging dialogue.
Gwion, Beth-Ann and Gareth share a flat in Deefordbridge (Pontrhydydyfrdwy – get your tongue around that!), but Gwion and Gareth have just have a bust-up.
Gwion takes the reader on a journey of rediscovery, which reveals a disturbed past in which he, as a young boy, experienced sex with an older man.
Rugby-playing and harp-playing Gareth, meanwhile, is forced to look again at his priorities after a chance encounter with a boy in the bushes and a night of sex with a former lover.
Beth-Ann – who restyles herself “Bethan” in order to make it sound more Welsh – is their American flatmate, whose lesbian mother visits Deefordbridge on her way to a European business meeting, and the two women provide us with an interesting foil to the intensity of the men’s relationship. Add a series of homophobic assaults in the area, and you have a potent mix.
Jones has published short stories before Angels. He was a winner of the American Library Association’s Stonewall Award for his first collection, Welsh Boys Too.