Even when nothing is happening in Jones’s fiction, a lot is happening, and the natural settings are bountifully alive.” —Publishers Weekly
“In this short novel, Jones’s spare prose conveys brutal realities alongside fleeting beauty, building in emotional power towards a heart-shaking climax.” —The Guardian
“[The Long Dry] seethes with the brutal squelch of farming, breeding, bleeding, death, and soars with moments of shuddering human frailty and grace.” —Boston Globe
“The Long Dry… proves that Jones has long been consistent (and consistently good) in his stylistic and thematic wheelhouse. This novel… leaves little question as to why Jones has been called ‘one of the most distinctive new voices in British fiction.’” —Rain Taxi
“Jones’ books are fistfuls of raw earth… [The Long Dry] has a poetic, elemental feel that’s enlivening even when the mood is at its lowest ebb.” —Star Tribune
“Jones’s lines propel us, enthrall us, and break our hearts.” —Vol. 1 Brooklyn
“Not since I first encountered Faulkner has a writer so impressed me with his rural wisdom. Set in the Welsh countryside, The Long Dry is at once profound and plainspoken, feral and fierce, tender and true. This book is a revelation, and Cynan Jones is a prophet of the wonderfully strange.” —Peter Geye
“The light in this dark tale . . . comes via its language. Jones writes about this mucky, perilous landscape with a simplicity and passion that evoke Seamus Heaney’s poetry.” —Kirkus Reviews
“This is a beautiful little novel that leaves the reader reeling with the powerful emotions it manages to render in such a short space and with such sparse language.” —Cleaver
“Have you ever wanted to live in the country? Warning: this book is not about life in the country. It’s about life. And death. It will make you cry, both because of the things that happen in it and because of the astoundingly unassuming language in which it is written. Read this book.” —Annie Bishai, Harvard Book Store
2017-01-23
A Welsh farmer's search for a stray cow turns into a darker meditation on mortality.This, Jones' debut novel, is thematically of a piece with the two others previously published in the United States (The Dig, 2015; Everything I Found on the Beach, 2016): it's slim and direct, set in a gloomy-feeling rural Wales, and concerned with the fragility of life. Gareth, a farmer, is searching for a pregnant cow as the story begins, but he has plenty else on his mind, including a downhearted wife (past miscarriages weigh heavily on her) with a secret, a sullen teenage son, and an aged dog due to be put down that day. And that's just what's within the confines of his house: a long drought prompts commentaries about how difficult and feral the landscape is, from the ducks that overrun the town to a failed pig farm to moles and cats and insects that seem to constantly encroach Gareth's homestead. The light in this dark tale—which culminates with a death in the family—comes via its language. Jones writes about this mucky, perilous landscape with a simplicity and passion that evoke Seamus Heaney's poetry: "The earth was full and hungry"; "When much of the goodness of the mole was gone and the bigger insects went the ants came, cleaning the bones and the lining from the skin." That lyricism isn't always to the benefit of the main plot; Gareth's wife and children are relatively underdeveloped compared to the flora and fauna that the lost cow has wandered into. That makes the novel feel a little more hardhearted than perhaps Jones intends. (Is human death not more tragic than animal carcasses?) But he crafts an effective tension between the hard economics of farming and the earthbound challenges of nature. Jones has expressed these themes more effectively elsewhere, but this debut sets the table well for his later work.
Jones's 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 neighbors, 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
