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"Praise for Cynan Jones:"[A] piercing novella. Like Cormac McCarthy, Jones can make the everyday sound fraught and biblical."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review"Jones's perfectly pitched novel will appeal to anyone looking beyond sheer thrills."-Library Journal"This slim volume has all the gravity of a black hole, and reading it is like standing on the event horizon. It's like a more beautiful Cormac McCarthy; a darker W.H. Auden."-Elliot Bay Book Company"There's nothing bucolic about this elemental, extraordinary tale of good and evil."-Shelf Awareness When a net is set, and that's the way you choose, you'll hit it. Hold, a Welsh fisherman, Grzegorz, a Polish migrant worker, and Stringer, an Irish gangster, all want the chance to make their lives better. One kilo of cocaine and the sea tie them together in a fatal series of decisions. Cynan Jones was born near Aberaeron on the west coast of Wales in 1975. He is the author of four short novels, most recently The Dig (Coffee House Press, 2014), which won a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize in 2014 and the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize 2015. His work has been translated into several languages, and short stories have aired on BBC Radio and appeared in a number of anthologies and publications including Granta. Everything I Found on the Beach is the second of three United States releases of his work by Coffee House Press"--… (meer)
Another book by Cynan Jones that I couldn’t put down on account of his unique phrasing and pace and his ability to conjure intense, relatable moments from his Everyman characters’ lives. This book focuses simultaneously on two men’s lives and their desire to improve their stations in totally different ways, and how their stories crash into one another through a random encounter.
The first man, Hold, is a journeyman fisherman, renting an old fishing boat, setting lobster traps and shore-based fish nets to earn a modest income. He lives in a trailer somewhere on the coast of Wales. His best friend has died three years earlier and he feels duty-bound to help care for his widow and her young son. He’s not sure of his place in their lives, or of his role—part duty, part desire.
The second man, Grzegorz, is an immigrant from Poland, with a wife and two young sons, living in public assistance somewhere in Great Britain. He’s a meat butcher by trade, but gets mixed up in some drug-running to find a way out of his poverty for his family.
One night while out rabbit hunting, Hold makes his way to the beach to pull in his nets and finds an inflatable raft drifting to shore, with the dead body of Grzegorz aboard. While pulling him to shore, he finds packages of cocaine on board, the man’s mobile phone, and while being battered by the waves he makes a decision that, since the phone still works, he will get the drugs to their final destination — and the payout can set his friend’s widow and son on a better course.
That is the entirety of the plot but the descriptive power of Jones’ sparse style is a force and we are brought along with Hold through the ceaseless tension of what will happen next.
Though completely foreign to most of our life experiences, there is nothing farcical or unbelievable about this or any of Jones’ stories. What I can relate to here is the feelings he attributes to his characters from moment to moment about their banal inner dialogues and how they make their decisions. Most relatable for me is how the landscape and weather and surroundings come alive, as if also characters, under Jones’ pen.
I started this novella on a quick work trip to Florida and finished it in a few days. I will read anything Cynan Jones writes. He is a magician of the simple, the direct, the efficient, the evocative. I’ve also enjoyed his books The Long Dry and The Dig. ( )
"Praise for Cynan Jones:"[A] piercing novella. Like Cormac McCarthy, Jones can make the everyday sound fraught and biblical."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review"Jones's perfectly pitched novel will appeal to anyone looking beyond sheer thrills."-Library Journal"This slim volume has all the gravity of a black hole, and reading it is like standing on the event horizon. It's like a more beautiful Cormac McCarthy; a darker W.H. Auden."-Elliot Bay Book Company"There's nothing bucolic about this elemental, extraordinary tale of good and evil."-Shelf Awareness When a net is set, and that's the way you choose, you'll hit it. Hold, a Welsh fisherman, Grzegorz, a Polish migrant worker, and Stringer, an Irish gangster, all want the chance to make their lives better. One kilo of cocaine and the sea tie them together in a fatal series of decisions. Cynan Jones was born near Aberaeron on the west coast of Wales in 1975. He is the author of four short novels, most recently The Dig (Coffee House Press, 2014), which won a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize in 2014 and the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize 2015. His work has been translated into several languages, and short stories have aired on BBC Radio and appeared in a number of anthologies and publications including Granta. Everything I Found on the Beach is the second of three United States releases of his work by Coffee House Press"--
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(3.61)
1
The first man, Hold, is a journeyman fisherman, renting an old fishing boat, setting lobster traps and shore-based fish nets to earn a modest income. He lives in a trailer somewhere on the coast of Wales. His best friend has died three years earlier and he feels duty-bound to help care for his widow and her young son. He’s not sure of his place in their lives, or of his role—part duty, part desire.
The second man, Grzegorz, is an immigrant from Poland, with a wife and two young sons, living in public assistance somewhere in Great Britain. He’s a meat butcher by trade, but gets mixed up in some drug-running to find a way out of his poverty for his family.
One night while out rabbit hunting, Hold makes his way to the beach to pull in his nets and finds an inflatable raft drifting to shore, with the dead body of Grzegorz aboard. While pulling him to shore, he finds packages of cocaine on board, the man’s mobile phone, and while being battered by the waves he makes a decision that, since the phone still works, he will get the drugs to their final destination — and the payout can set his friend’s widow and son on a better course.
That is the entirety of the plot but the descriptive power of Jones’ sparse style is a force and we are brought along with Hold through the ceaseless tension of what will happen next.
Though completely foreign to most of our life experiences, there is nothing farcical or unbelievable about this or any of Jones’ stories. What I can relate to here is the feelings he attributes to his characters from moment to moment about their banal inner dialogues and how they make their decisions. Most relatable for me is how the landscape and weather and surroundings come alive, as if also characters, under Jones’ pen.
I started this novella on a quick work trip to Florida and finished it in a few days. I will read anything Cynan Jones writes. He is a magician of the simple, the direct, the efficient, the evocative. I’ve also enjoyed his books The Long Dry and The Dig. (