"The best book I've read this year" Andrew Davies --Andrew Davies

 

"Jones' first novel takes place over the course of a hot summer day on a cattle farm somewhere in rural Wales. From a simple plot Gareth, a farmer, searches for a missing calving cow a series of interactions and accidents emerges to shape the lives of the farmer s family, his neighbours, and the domestic animals and wildlife coexisting in this landscape steeped in history. As in William Faulkner s most moving work, Jones seemingly surveys the whole of existence by describing the humblest details of life on this postage-stamp of unnamed Welsh soil; the sound of machinery in the distance, the flight of damselflies, digging a grave in hard ground. The relentless heat and drought express the thirsts literal, emotional, and spiritual that oppress this landscape and its inhabitants. In this wounded place, tragedy is persistent and immanent. Jones suggests, however, that redemption, fulfillment, and peace, though infrequent as a summer rain, are as inevitable as the sunrise. Winner of the 2007 Betty Trask Award, this is a powerful and highly recommended debut." J.G.Matthews, Washington State Univ., Pullman --Library Journal US

 

"A wee wonderful book" Niall Griffiths --Niall Griffiths

 

"Cynan Jones's lovely, poignant short novel The Long Dry (Parthian Books) is set in coastal west Wales. The action is confined to a single day near the end of parched summer, in which a calving cow wanders off from its herd and must be tracked down by its farmer, Gareth. This makes the book sound rather mundane, but there is nothing mundane about it. Its focus is on the interior lives of its characters - Gareth himself, his troubled wife Kate, his teenage son, his young daughter, Emmy - and its themes are weighty ones: loss, decay, ambition and disappointment, the pull of the land and the hardness of living on it. This is not a novel that encourages tourism. Gareth has the farmer's disdain both for visitors, who think the country is a "park", and for incomers, who mispronounce Welsh words and let their dogs run wild in the fields. But Jones's sense of place is acute, and his passion for the landscape - for its colours, its creatures, its textures, its scents - is absolutely magnetic. The book is an especially resonant one for me: though set in Ceredigion it conjures up the exact feel of my home county, neighbouring Pembrokeshire, with its dusty summer lanes, its flower-crowded hedges, its sweeping vistas of pasture and ploughland - "and the sea before you," as Jones puts it, "silk and blue above a line of thick gorse, bursting into yellow". Sarah Waters, The Guardian --The Guardian

--Niall Griffiths

 

Cynan Jones's lovely, poignant short novel The Long Dry (Parthian Books) is set in coastal west Wales. The action is confined to a single day near the end of parched summer, in which a calving cow wanders off from its herd and must be tracked down by its farmer, Gareth. This makes the book sound rather mundane, but there is nothing mundane about it. Its focus is on the interior lives of its characters - Gareth himself, his troubled wife Kate, his teenage son, his young daughter, Emmy - and its themes are weighty ones: loss, decay, ambition and disappointment, the pull of the land and the hardness of living on it. This is not a novel that encourages tourism. Gareth has the farmer's disdain both for visitors, who think the country is a "park", and for incomers, who mispronounce Welsh words and let their dogs run wild in the fields. But Jones's sense of place is acute, and his passion for the landscape - for its colours, its creatures, its textures, its scents - is absolutely magnetic. The book is an especially resonant one for me: though set in Ceredigion it conjures up the exact feel of my home county, neighbouring Pembrokeshire, with its dusty summer lanes, its flower-crowded hedges, its sweeping vistas of pasture and ploughland - "and the sea before you," as Jones puts it, "silk and blue above a line of thick gorse, bursting into yellow". Sarah Waters, The Guardian --The Guardian

 

A wee wonderful book Niall Griffiths --Niall Griffiths