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Life
1942- ; b. Aberystwyth; ed. St Padarn’s Convent Sch., and Sheffield University; appt. lecturer at New University of Ulster, 1969; issued Resistance (1985), a novel, and winner of Welsh Arts Council Fiction Prize, 1986; retired from University of Ulster, 2002; lives in Co. Londonderry.
Works
Resistance (Blackstaff Press 1985) [see note].
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Commentary
John Hanratty, review of Mary Jones, Resistance (Blackstaff), with works by Patrick McGinley and John McGahern, call her novel ‘a daring and ambitious debut’ in which ‘twin elements of national calamity (the unmourned dath of the Welsh nation, long eclipsed by the more newsworthy Ulster problem) and personal crisis (the heroine has a tumour in her jaw) find their perfect metaphor in the ramshackle dying hotel were Ann Thomas retreats to await her operation. Here she meets Alex, an embittered young nationalist who heaps distaiin on the school-teacher unable to speak her native language. / The novel is painstakingly constructed [...] The humour wonderfully black.’ (Books Ireland, Oct. 1985, p.174.)
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Notes
Resistance (Belfast: Blackstaff 1985): Ann Thomas, awaiting a terrifying operation, seeks refuge in a remote Welsh hotel; her obsession projects a fantastic light on the crumbling hotel its occupants, outrageous conmen and grimly funny drunks, insolent staff and manic Welsh nationalists, ‘It was like a brain itself, the hotel, cell upon cell upon cell. Threaded with nerves that reaches out from the central areas towards the tiny, hidden, inaccessible parts their impulses growing weaker and weaker ...’. (Blackstaff Catalogue, 1987).
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