Shrewsbury mental health workers collaborate on new novel
Three local artists and mental health practitioners have come together to publish a novel: The Black Dogs of Glaslyn. Set partly in Medieval Wales and partly in the modern day, it interweaves two stories that provide the interested reader with insights into what shapes us as human beings, including what makes people depressed (be hounded by 'The Black Dog').
Author Dr Guy Holmes brings together insights learned from his own mental health difficulties and those of patients he worked with during a three-decade career in community mental health services in Telford and Shrewsbury and finds ways of illustrating these in the form of an exciting, if at times dark, novel, rather than a text book.
The book also contains illustrations and maps drawn by Duncan Stoddart, an artist and counsellor living in Frankwell. The cover pictures were painted by Cailzie Dunn who, since retiring from working as a psychologist in Shrewsbury for over 30 years, has become a successful artist, her paintings appearing in several local exhibitions.
Guy Holmes is an award-winning Clinical Psychologist who has appeared several times on BBC national radio. This is his fifth book.
The Black Dogs of Glaslyn is available from all bookshops and online.
The book launch will be at Bevan’s on Frankwell roundabout on October 5 from 5.30pm onwards, with paperback and hardback copies available to buy.
All royalties from the book sales will be used to fund local groups that help people’s mental wellbeing.
From the back cover:
Nothing has been the same in The Prince’s household since he traded one of his fine hunting dogs for a strange, green-jacketed monkey, and now his Kingdom, in Medieval Gwynedd, is starting to suffer. One thousand years later, in modern day Beddgelert, Martyn Llewellyn is struggling to recover from a traumatic childhood and has been offered the chance to make a name for himself at Bangor University through conducting an experiment on dogs. The lives of Martyn, The Prince, and The Prince’s son are inextricably linked: haunted by their own demons, their own ‘Black Dogs’, each has to find a way to survive.
“The physical landscape of North Wales and the psychological landscape of people who live there are imaginatively brought together in this gripping psychological novel.” Zounish Rafique, Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy.
“Guy Holmes ingeniously weaves together stories based on ancient Welsh folklore with insights about modern life and the human condition, creating a rich tapestry of a novel about obsessive love, destructive depression and the very nature of evil.” Daren Kay, author of The Brightonians and The Brightonians Under Siege.
By Your World Contributor
