The Long Dry - Brossura

Jones, Cynan

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1905762585 ISBN 13: 9781905762583

Casa editrice: Parthian Books, 2007

Riassunto

Waking up early to check the cattle, Gareth notices one of the calving cows is missing and sets off to find her before the sun gets too strong. What follows is a search through memory and anxiety about losing what he has as Gareth walks the land looking for the missing cow. Increasingly, the narrative is disturbed by arresting and often brutal imagery as things chip away at Gareth's patience and the need to find the cow becomes more pressing. The day unfolds, and the cow's behaviour emerges as a metaphor for the relationship between Gareth and his wife Kate as they stumble on desperately in their changing care for each other. Only the reader is aware of the tragedy that awaits the family a few days down the line, throwing the story into shadow with a terrible poignancy.

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Recensione

"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

L'autore

Cynan Jones is a writer whose work has appeared in Richard & Judy's Winning Stories and Urban Welsh.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Parthian Books
• Data di pubblicazione: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1905762585
• ISBN 13: 9781905762583
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 119