Description

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.

Publisher Review

Breathtakingly tense, vital and precise. Cynan Jones has a rare gift for making us experience, moment by moment, the struggles of his characters to survive — Carys Davies Pellucid clinical sentences craft a loving symphony of meat and magic, mucous, mud and mire. Cynan Jones’s writing is pure electric energy… Every story thrums and squirms with life. The cumulative effect is to deliver a shock to the heart of what a wild, strange and wonderful thing it is to be human — Megan Barker The often layered, dark subject matter of Jones’ stories is belied by the clarity of his language in a fascinating way — Sara Baume Each paragraph reads like a beautiful, multi-layered prose poem. The crystalline language conveys, with real emotive power, the squelch and suck of mud and manure, the stink of blood, the skin-feel of drizzle. Spending time with this collection is a sensory, immersive experience — Niall Griffiths A master of concision and precision, Cynan Jones crafts stories as taut as steel wire, a tightrope display of careful draughtsmanship and daring language — Jon Gower Pulse reveals the bloody, brutal and beautiful truth of rural life. Hewn with a sparse, poetic vision, it offers an unflinching, visceral account of the often-neglected lives of those who toil the land. There is no finer nature writer than Cynan Jones — Adelle Stripe These six stories of characters in states of extreme jeopardy are rendered in language of relentless and precise power and the overall effect is of an almost visionary intensity. Pulse is a remarkable collection from a writer of singular gifts — Tom Lee These are stories of elemental power, which dramatise the collision of external and internal forces to thrilling and unsettling effect. Their exploration of the struggle between people and nature – both that of the world, and their own – is always riveting and frequently heartbreaking. Pulse is a magnificent collection — James Scudamore A force of creaturely urgency. Cynan Jones is a blast of fresh air, a stumble in the dark, and a sudden chill in the guts — Tim Winton Jones’s prose is extraordinary, somehow managing to be simultaneously rich and spare. Each of the stories is a novel in miniature, a whole emotional landscape evoked precisely with the most minimal gestures — Jessie Greengrass