Pulse

'Jones is a gifted, well-measured writer, and these stories are valuable portraits of the sorts of people whom contemporary fiction too often overlooks’ The Telegraph

‘Jones’s style is at once spare and dense; his characters think and act in lines stripped of excess yet they contain worlds… he has developed an impressionistic style in which nature provides an allegorical hook on which to hang stories that leave readers to intuit rather than be shown a deeper truth.' Financial Times

‘Jones’s searing stories are freighted with emotional weight… Dealing with fear and vulnerability, these stories head for the gut and the heart.' Daily Mail

'Each [story] is told with a compelling immediacy and intensity, and with the quality of returning to a memory.' The Guardian

‘Cynan Jones allows his readers little opportunity to breathe. His compulsive narratives are relentless, sweeping you along thrillingly in propulsive short paragraphs… Heart-stopping… Incantatory and unsettling stories’ Irish Times

'Pared-down though his writing may be… it is shot through with moments of arresting originality and beauty… The painterly effect is exquisite, the first sentence of the first story exemplifying the quiet power of Cynan Jones’s prose.’ The Times Literary Supplement

'These are stories that one reads with the ear as much as with the eye.' Wall Street Journal

'Stock has stuck with me more than any other new story I read this year.' John Self

'...Jones is one of the finest writers in the language. Every story, every sentence, exhibits an extraordinary care and rigour... few writers are as alert to the interplay between the human and the other-than-human, and to the terrific possibilities of the distinction breaking down. This is a collection of utterly gripping and immersive fiction.' Martin MacInnes, author of In Ascension

A man heads into the snow to hunt down the bear that has been taking stock from farms in the valley. A father tries to make something go right for the son he no longer lives with. A partner is called to help when a cow's labour goes horribly wrong. A fierce storm threatens to bring down a tree on powerlines over a family's home.

Fear, vulnerability, tension and resolve course through these arresting and indelible stories from one of the finest British writers at work today.