Picks 2019

My reading/reviewing took a knock last year, and I haven't read anything like the number of books I usually would. As a result, I haven't gone for a full Top Ten of the year (also, you might note, I'm late posting this). Anyway, here we are, with some of my favourite books of 2019





Stillicide by Cynan Jones. Breath-catching, heart-wrenching, stunning - a series of self-contained but linked short stories set in a bleak, not-too distant, future where providing water to big cities requires military precision and armed guards. Although it's a long step from Jones' previous works set in rural Wales, there's the same precision and attention to detail, his ability to get inside a character's head and create living, breathing people is just the same.






The Sea Within Me by Sarah Dobbs. More dystopian sci-fi, this time in an England threatened by rising sea-levels and terrorists. In grim, beleaguered Newark by the Sea, the government is trialing a scheme to combat crime and fear which erases anything unpleasant from people's minds - a way to keep the population happy, or a form of mind control?







The 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' vibe continues with Bridget Collins' The Binding. A gripping tale of betrayal and hidden secrets set in a vaguely Victorian setting, unhappy memories are gathered by a form of magic, and bound into books. When Emmett is apprenticed as a bookbinder, he starts to uncover his own hidden memories - and his view of the world changes completely.





And The Wind Sees All by Gudmundur Andri Thorsson Another collection of short stories, this time fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle to paint a portrait of the inhabitants of an Icelandic fishing village. At a cursory view they seem happy, respectable, comfortable in their life and ways, but behind the smiling faces heartache, betrayal and deceit lurk.









My last pick - Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield - is a bit of a cheat as I also included it in last year's 'best of' list; it was only available then as an e-book, now it's in 'proper' book form. It's an astounding piece of storycraft - a tale as much about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the frequently puzzling world, as it is about a girl rescued from the river one dark, stormy night.

Stillicide by Cynan Jones

This latest work from Cynan Jones is something a little different - a series of self-contained but linked short stories set in the (probably not so far off) future. A future where weather patterns have changed; despite almost constant summer rain, water is in short supply. No more long luxurious baths, not even a quick shower in the morning or even flushing loos! Supplying London with water has become a major undertaking. Pipes no longer feed it to the city, instead it's transported from distant reservoirs by the Water Train, but the service is increasingly under threat of sabotage. As an alternative, a huge Ice Dock is to be built - icebergs towed south to it, and their melt water collected - but construction work will displace more of the population that originally planned for, and people are taking to the streets to protest. 
Against this grim backdrop the reader follows people going about their lives -  a journalist obsessed with his search for a big scoop, an elderly man facing death, a woman persuaded by nature's beauty that there must be more to life that her dull relationship with her husband, young boys playing with a dog in the rubble of waste ground, and Branner (the main character, if the collection can be said to have one), a police marksman protecting the Water Train, his thoughts dodging back and forth to when he first met his wife, to his shock and disbelief on hearing her terminal diagnosis, to how he can attempt to go on without her. Within the stories, they change positions, reappearing in different roles - the central character of one becoming a bit-player or walk-on part in another - so that, although each section reads as a standalone piece, there's a underlying cohesion between them forming a greater story.

This isn't just a story of doom and gloom. Despite the bleak man-made conditions, nature is showing its resilience, its capacity to take hold and flourish in even the most inhospitable places, reclaiming waste ground and construction sites. People too are trying to improve their lot with rooftop allotments and small 'new-farms'; a personal way to overcome shortages from the 'mass-produced' sector.


It's all brought to life with Jones' familiar precision, his attention to detail, and ability to get under his characters' skin - focusing on the small things of life to build an image of the whole. Butterflies dancing in the park, the shape left as a bird darts away, the feel of limpets being prised from the rock, or the guts spilling out of a fish.



It's breath-catching, heart-wrenching, stunning. If you haven't discovered Jones' work yet, then do; you're missing a treat. And don't anyone try telling me that dystopian fiction can't be literary





Although the concept had been mulling around in the author's mind for a while, it was a commission from Radio 4 which brought it to life. If you prefer to listen rather than read you can still (October 2019) find it online

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Granta Books
Genre - Adult literary fiction, dystopian

Cynan Jones on his latest novel "Cove" - author interview

 As you may already know, here at Our Book Reviews Online we're great fans of Welsh author Cynan Jones, so we're delighted that he's agreed to answer a few of Maryom's questions about his latest novel, Cove. As I've come to expect from his writing, this may be a short book, but it's big on impact, and hidden depths ... 

"Out at sea, in a sudden storm, a man is struck by lightning. When he wakes, injured and adrift on a kayak, his memory of who he is and how he came to be there is all but shattered. Now he must pit himself against the pain and rely on his instincts to get back to shore, and to the woman he dimly senses waiting for his return."

The publisher’s blurb describes your latest novel “Cove” as the story of “a man locked in an uneven struggle with the forces of nature”. Now the image that immediately springs to my mind reading that is of an action-packed adventure with the hero facing huge mountainous waves and maybe a killer whale or two thrown in for good measure, but I’d have imagined wrongly! How would you describe it?

Cove is about attrition, and faith.  Those are the two things you need in the face of overwhelming odds; and Nature is overwhelming.


At ninety-five pages ‘Cove’ certainly isn’t a long novel, and there’s a feeling of everything being pared down to the merest essentials. How did the writing of it progress; was it always going to be this short, or did you start with a massive epic and chip away at it till the very bones were left? Could it even be a case of more words would not have added anything?

At one stage the manuscript was 30,000 or so words. There was more before the storm, and the story travelled past the point is ends now.  But something wasn’t right. I kept trying to write around that. It got worse. Eventually, I stepped away, let the book settle in my head until I saw it clearly, and went back to the desk months later. The story found its form around 11,500 words. That’s why it wouldn’t work at 30,000…


There’s a thank you at the end which infers that at least some of this novel is written from personal experience. How much did that experience add to the story? Could you have written it without this having happened?

The thank you at the end is chiefly allegorical, but a number of personal experiences found their way into the book. I was on the beach when a lifeboat came searching the shore; I’ve been thrown out of a kayak in a squall (something about that here); I was visited by glow-in-the-dark dolphins while night fishing as a teenager.

The idea of casting a man out alone on a kayak, bringing in my experiences on the water, was in my head for some time, but it took years for that idea to fuse into a story. The lightning strike delivered the point of fusion.


One moment particularly terrified me – a point at which the kayak has drifted out of sight of land, absolute emptiness on all sides with no sense of which way to paddle to safety, then the man looks down into the depths – and it seems like he’s balancing on the edge of a cliff and could easily fall over. I’d never seen water this way but as a person with a fear of heights, I’m never  going to forget this image!

The surface is everything, in Cove. It’s the place of awareness. The point where depth and space meet.
Dare I ask you to elaborate on that?
It is, absolutely, a physical thing too, the surface. But there's so much meaning in it - the meniscus that physically supports him; the place two elements (we are not able to inhabit properly - water and air) meet... it's both the tightrope and the safety net.

That image of a man precariously balanced (which again terrifies me) leads nicely to the next question ...

Although ‘Cove’ is the story of one man, I saw a wider relevance – that this is a story for any of us that feel we’re out of our depths -  and an echo of Stevie Smith’s “I was much too far out all my life/And not waving but drowning”.  Where you thinking in this way when writing or am I being guilty of reading too much into it? 

I was absolutely thinking this way. Ostensibly, I wanted the narrative to be straight forward and physical and limited to the capacity of one damaged character. But beyond (below, and above) that, it had to be massive, universal, ambiguous and faceted.


And lastly, although it’s difficult to discuss without spoilers – how did you see the ending...   I saw it as hopeful, other reviewers say it isn’t. Can we agree that’s it’s at least ambiguous?

Ah! I just used that word ambiguous. I know what happens to him because the first drafts went past the point the book now ends.  So why end it where it ends? Because the story should always go beyond the book. And that happens in the reader’s mind. Would you survive? Make it back? Give up? Much of the ending relies on the character of the reader. Clearly, you believe in the outside chance. There’s hope. Right?

Definitely! When all else is gone, there's still hope, or so I believe. It's interesting though that reviews may be letting us inside the reviewer's head ... 

Thanks for dropping by, Cynan, and giving me possibly even more to think about!

Maryom's review of Cove can be found here

Cynan Jones' website can be found at www.cynanjones.net and you can follow him on Twitter as @cynan1975

Cove by Cynan Jones

review by Maryom

A man is paddling far out at sea when a sudden electrical storm bursts around him, lightning running down to the water - and attracted to him and his kayak. When he regains consciousness, he's out of sight of land, injured, dazed, no idea of how much time has passed, of who is is, why he's there, his paddles are lost, his sense of direction gone... Instinct alone forces him to attempt the seemingly impossible journey to land.
"a man locked in an uneven struggle with the forces of nature" is how the blurb describes Cove. Well, to me, that sounds too much like some hunky hero in an all action-packed drama facing huge mountainous waves, and fighting off killer jellyfish or attacking sharks. Rest assured - this book isn't like that at all!
It's a quiet, undramatic tale, which is surprising considering its subject. It's short at under a hundred pages. Tightly written with not a surplus word left, but it still captures the helplessness of being adrift at sea, and the man's confusion of not knowing who he is, where he belongs, and his fear at the physical enormity of the waters surrounding him - the depth below, the expanse on all sides with no sight of land.

Jones proves once again that a book doesn't need to have a massive word count to make an impact. he gives the reader enough to set their imagination to work - to feel the pain, the fear, the physical and emotional numbness, the tightly bottled-down panic, and the buried animal instinct which strives for survival without, or may even despite, man's rational thought processes.
It's a book to devour whole in one sitting, and then turn over and examine in your mind, to see various aspects and themes appear.

Although Cove is very much about one man, in one very specific situation, it also feels like a story with wider application relating to anyone drifting, astray in life, trying to find their way back to something indefinable but lost. I couldn't help but be reminded of Stevie Smith's "I was much too far out all my life/And not waving but drowning", particularly when the kayaker spots a beach in the distance, with families paddling, but he still drifts helplessly past carried by currents beyond his control.

I suspect the ending may divide readers but I see it as a hopeful one, like rushing headlong to a re-birth. Maybe I just like to be an optimist.




Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Granta Books
Genre - Adult literary fiction 

Other reviews; Tim Hannigan

The Long Dry by Cynan Jones

 review by Maryom


 One hot summer morning, Gareth wakes early and goes to check on his ready-to-calf cows - and discovers one has gone missing over night. Feeling restless, she'll have wandered off, as they do, pushing her way through hedges and  fences, probably heading for the nasty boggy bit of the farm, so before she can come to any harm, Gareth goes in search of her.  As the day gets hotter he tramps up hill and down, over fields lying parched after a long drought, and his thoughts turn on the problems of his relationship with his wife, the happier early years of their marriage and his plans for the future.

If you heard a novel described as "the story of a man looking for a cow", you'd probably not be rushing to read it - but give it a chance, think of Gareth as a rural version of Leopold Bloom, pursuing his odyssey not through Dublin's paved streets but alongside the hedges and fences of a Welsh hill farm. As the day progresses, the reader slips into the thoughts of Gareth, his wife Kate, hiding her secrets back in the farmhouse, teenage son Dylan angry "out of habit" and young daughter Emmy who sees fairies and dead people. This is one of the strengths of Jones' writing - that he can bring to life such a diverse range of feelings and emotions; first I felt Gareth's version of how his marriage is sliding on to the rocks - then saw events from Kate's completely opposite standpoint; when two boys are faced with the dreadful task of killing an injured rabbit, I felt not just there, but part of them, willing them on but appalled at the same time; I even felt I understood the bafflement of a cow just delivered of a still-born calf.
This is Cynan Jones' first novel and is set in the landscape that's become familiar to me through his later work - Everything I Found On The Beach and The Dig. There's the same grit and grimness underlying the beauty of the landscape, the same feeling of inevitable anguish. It's not all doom and gloom - there's light relief from the teenage son, with his delight in driving the transit van, and the mass 'attack' of the ducks on the nearby seaside town - but moments of joy seem short-lived and over-shadowed by sorrow to come.

Originally published by Parthian  The Long Dry has now been re-printed by Granta as part of a matching set of all three of Jones' novels.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Granta Books
Genre - Adult literary fiction

Maryom's Picks of the Year - 2014

 Last year I couldn't cut my 'picks of the year' down to a small selection at all. This year, I'm being more ruthless and from an extensive longlist I've chosen a Top Twelve.....

I think there's a tendency to pick more recently read books for a list like this but, just to prove there are exceptions, top of my list is the first book I reviewed this year - Donal Ryan's The Thing About December The heart-breaking story of gentle but dim-witted Johnsey Cunliffe is played out over a year, a chapter for each month, leading to the climax in December; an immensely sad but compelling read.




Sticking with the grim side of life, and another book from early in the year - Cynan Jones' The Dig charts a clash of wills and lifestyles between Daniel, a farmer committed to his land and animals, and an anonymous badger-baiter, earning his living through cruelty. It's raw and bleak, a definite eye-opener for anyone who thinks the countryside is a rural idyll.







In A History of Loneliness John Boyne tackles the fallout from the paedophile scandals that rocked the Catholic Church in Ireland. Father Odran Yates has been a priest for forty years, has tried to live a good, blameless life, ignoring the abuses of power taking place around him, but now has to face up to his niggling conscience.






Carys Bray's debut novel, A Song For Issy Bradley, is about loss, hope, faith and family as a Mormon family face up to probably the most devastating thing that can happen - the death of a child. Ian and Claire, and teenage children Zippy and Alma struggle with their faith and their loss; only 7 year old Jacob can see an answer - to work a miracle and bring Issy back. Ultimately hopeful and life-affirming, there are without doubt some dreadfully dark moments but they're balanced by light, humour and love.






  Another family - this time the Saddeqs from Lahore in Pakistan. Roopa Farooki's The Good Children explores the complex relationships within this family- between children and parents, and between children themselves - as they grow up, spread their wings, leave home for England or the US, but always feel that tug that binds them together. It's grand in scale - moving from the1940s to the present day - and size - 620 pages, though it didn't feel a page too long.




I struggle to find ghost stories that scare me, so I was oddly delighted to stumble across this - Sugar Hall by Tiffany Murray. While his mother makes plans for a new life in the old family home, Dieter, the boy-heir, encounters a strange ghostly boy with evil designs. With a growing feeling of menace, this is a truly spine-chilling read, probably best avoided late at night.

 Another debut, this time an excellent sci-fi dystopian thriller. Tomorrow and Tomorrow follows grief-consumed Dominic as he wanders through the virtual archive that brings nuclear-blast destroyed Pittsburgh and its inhabitants back to life.  Not-too-distant future dystopia with TV-like 'adware' that constantly streams news, adverts and reality TV style porn direct into the brain, a destroyed city recreated in virtual form, a twisting turning thriller and grief-struck hero combine to create a wonderful, complex story.

 The Lemon Grove by Helen Walsh could easily have been just another tale of sun, sea and illicit sex but it's so much more; a perceptive portrait of a family reaching a turning point in their lives, a marriage that's a little too stale, and a woman seeking to re-gain her lost youth by tumbling heads over heels in lust with a hot 17 year old. I absolutely loved it.




The storyline to Hamid Ismailov's The Dead Lake reads almost like a fairy tale - a young boy ventures into a forbidden lake and is cursed for life - but the evil wizard here is the Russian government and the lake has been polluted by atomic testing. The first of Peirene's 2014 Coming of Age series deals with a boy who doesn't grow up, and a whole region caught, literally and figuratively, in the fallout from the arms race. Told in plain, straightforward prose, it's a tale to make your heart ache.






I've read a lot of crime novels over the year but this was my favourite. The fourth of Sharon Bolton's Lacey Flint series, A Dark and Twisted Tide, is set among the old wharfs and  abandoned warehouses of London. A complex story that developed in unforeseen ways, with the story told from multiple points of view and a timeline that jumps backwards and forwards. It's only at the very end that everything comes together - and in a totally unexpected way.







...and to round off my list two rather different 'lighter' reads...

First, something very dark and wicked - Lizzie Prain finds an unusual way to dispose of her husband's dead body as she lovingly cooks her way through his remains in Season To Taste or How To Eat Your Husband. Natalie Young's humour is dark and twisted - think Sweeney Todd meets Desperate Housewives - and not for the squeamish.





Last, not least but certainly the lightest of my list, another debut - from actor Sara Crowe. Campari for Breakfast is a delightfully quirky coming of age tale about finding love and finding oneself. There are family secrets to be unearthed and a ghostly visitor to be braved, while the house threatens to crumble down and desperate ways are sought to save it. I absolutely adored this. It's light, funny and sad by turns, but overwhelmingly full of 17 year old heroine Sue's belief that one day she'll find love and begin to live decadently, sipping campari for breakfast!







Not really eligible for this list were some really amazing books published in previous years; Andrea Levy's Small Island, George Mackay Brown's Greenvoe, and Roopa Farooki's The Flying Man

Cynan Jones - Author Interview "The Dig"

"It’s an extraordinary example of the kind of ruptured power that the weakly cruel get off on."

Today Cynan Jones 'visits' the blog to talk about his latest book "The Dig" and the contentious matter of badger baiting...

The Dig is shocking, at times horrifying, so what inspired you to write it?

I wanted to write about the way we try to create a safe space for ourselves – physically, emotionally – and how an external force can break into it. Generally, I look for some allegorical vehicle that will carry along a narrative about what people go through. In the case of The Dig, the deep, sheltered place of a badger sett provided the allegory. Once you choose to write about a subject, you can’t back out. The processes of lambing and capturing are unavoidably visceral and physical. The language and story had to defer to that.

Country life as depicted seems very harsh - not the pastoral idyll of holiday brochures or glossy 'country' magazines. Do you think yours is the more accurate representation?

Having lived here all my life (barring the odd couple of years in cities) I know that it is. There’s an industry built on fictionalising the countryside as an aspirational place. Even the phrase ‘country life’ comes with a rosy-cheeked, rustic-kitchened kind of condescension.

It is idyllic. But that’s balanced with a bleakness sometimes (which, contrarily, I also find compelling). You spend all night in a freezing cold lambing shed, the rain hammering. Then in the morning, the rain passed, you turn the lambs out in the top field and the wide view of the bay is breathtaking. It’s all about balance.

So, the harshness and isolation of Daniel's life are more a reflection of his personal circumstances?

Lambing is a tough time physically. He’s using the immersion of that, the demand of it, as a mechanism to keep going, and we should feel throughout that he’s running out of steam. Life, as it were, is not harsh or isolated so much. But – as with a number of lifestyles – farming entails a massive requirement at times. Given Daniel’s circumstances, and what he’s trying to navigate, that requirement and his emotional state is a brutal combination.

Many of the scenes in The Dig, from lambing to badger baiting, are very hands on.  How much, and what sort of, research do you do before writing?

I generally do a lot of research. It’s the writer’s responsibility to do what they can to make sure the facts they’re using are right. No doubt I’ll muddle something sometime but it won’t be because I was lazy, or made assumptions.

Having helped through lambing, those details were simply there. In terms of the capturing and baiting scenes, I spoke with Gordon Lumby of Dyfed Badger Watch and Rescue who confirmed many of the things I found out about people involved in the ‘sport’. I researched dog breeding, dog training, trapping, the releasing of mink, all sorts. Written accounts – mainly historical – of badger digs. (Sometimes whole villages would attend after church). I created fake profiles on forums to talk with baiters and fighting dog breeders. Often, I wished I hadn’t.

I’ve been asked numerous times whether I’ve been badger digging. No. It’s abhorrent. The scenes are accurate because I’ve experienced the processes that surround the act. You don’t have to have dug a badger, but you have to have dug, and you have to have been in the woods that time of the morning.

The badger baiter also provides an in-demand service, ridding farms of rats which are definitely seen as expendable vermin. There seems to me to be a thin line between which animals fall into this category, and which don't; the government with its cull is certainly trying to put badgers in it. Do you think they should be? Are there any easy answers to the badger/TB question?

I’ve had some fairly harsh swipes from all angles (threats from diggers, comments from cattle farmers, anger from environmentalists who assume I’m glamorising the ‘sport’). From the start I’ve avoided being drawn into this question. It’s not what the book is about.

I personally feel the cull is lunacy. It simply has no grounding, and the science – which I researched quite hard at the time – doesn’t stack up. (They tried – and abandoned - the cull in Wales a few years before attempting the same thing in England. I’m not sure how aware people are of that). However, the book is about people and I deliberately avoided a political remit.

Something I commented on in my review was the attitude of the boy taken along digging for badgers by his father; his feeling that he had to join in, to pretend he was enjoying it even, otherwise he'd be seen as weak and childish. Do you think this is how such barbaric 'sports' are perpetuated?

I think we all– to varying degrees – want to be accepted. Another boy might go along to a football match with his father, or go for a bike ride. But this boy’s father digs badgers.

I fear it’s not how the thing is perpetuated however. I’m afraid it’s simply perpetual. There will always be people who do this.

The one thing I couldn’t navigate during the work was why anyone is drawn to badger digging. Like it or not, I could accept there was a thrill to the fox chase, or the ‘frenzy’ of ratting, and a personal achievement to shooting on target. But badger digging is an inane bullying. The excuse is often ‘it works the dogs’. It’s an extraordinary example of the kind of ruptured power that the weakly cruel get off on.

The badger baiter is a very brutal man whereas Daniel the farmer is caring and compassionate to both his animals and the land he farms. Is it too simplistic to see these men in terms of good versus evil? Or reading too much into things to see Daniel as some form of sacrifice?
While I prefer to let the reader decide whether something is right or wrong, good or evil, there is a definite pitting of one force against another. I tried to show both characters simply as they are, but their actions are good, and are bad. That arch element to the story (what some have called the ‘mythic’) was very deliberate, and I pushed the language at times to reflect that. Given that, yes, I’ve implied a sacrificial motivation. But what exactly is Daniel sacrificing himself for, or because of?

Do you ever consider the possibility of manipulating the story to bring it to a 'happy end'? Would that have been too unrealistic?

The story is God. Once you’ve set out a set of circumstances and drop determined characters into them, you have to be true to the way things would play out. The Dig went through a number of rewrites. It was, at one stage, a much broader book (90,000 words or so, and, in fact, two connected short novels really), but I cut 60,000 words to focus on the collision between Daniel and the badger baiter. An ending played out further in a previous draft.

Do you ever find that characters want to take events into their own hands? Particularly did you find that once created Daniel and the badger baiter were bound to clash?

I try to know what I am going to write before I get pen to page. To know that, I have to know the characters. Those characters are then capable only of actions authentic to themselves. Daniel had to go and investigate the sound he hears. So yes, the two men are bound from the start to clash. The Dig is essentially a narrative of collision.

Since I read The Dig, I accidentally came across this quote from Big Sur by Jack Kerouac which I thought summed up that one brief moment of complete happiness for Daniel -  “On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars - Something good will come out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that - There's no need to say another word.” A pure coincidence or were you aware of this piece?

That’s pure coincidence, and the first time I’ve seen it. But one thing that recurs when you work on the right book is coincidence. It’s extraordinary sometimes what happens, how many things feed in – almost to keep urging you along, to tell you: you’re doing the right thing. Mostly, you’re not trying to deliver some huge original insight, you’re trying to communicate something many people acknowledge but perhaps can’t articulate quite. It’s likely then that other writers hit the same notes for things that are universally felt. And that’s because they’re true.

I know you've been busy on your next book, so can you tell us a little about it?

The next book is (very) different from The Dig. Granta have just read a first draft. I would have held back longer before showing it them as I knew the book was far from ready. But as it’s so different I needed to know it was the right thing to work on. We’re pretty sure it is.


Thanks for visiting today Cynan and best of luck with your future projects - we'll certainly be eagerly awaiting them.


Bits and pieces that may be of interest;
Author's website
Our Reviews: The Dig
               Everything I Found On The Beach
               Bird, Blood, Snow
               The Fart (short story)
and previous interviews - re Everything I Found On The Beach
                                Bringing Down the Giants - reworking the Tale of Peredur; Bird, Blood, Snow

The Dig by Cynan Jones

review by Maryom

The Dig is a raw, bleak story of two very different country dwellers and the inevitable collision they're heading for.
Daniel, a farmer, is desperately trying to cope with bereavement. Worn down and devastated by his loss he's still determined to carry on tending to his birthing sheep. He life is tied up in the farm, in nurturing the land and his livestock despite the harshness of his life and the setbacks encountered daily.
On the other hand, the anonymous 'big man' earns his living in the most violent way imaginable, killing rats on local farms and digging badgers out of their setts and supplying them to people for 'sport'. The only glimmer of affection he shows is for his dogs, though even then it's linked to their ability as rat-catchers or badger-baiters.
The Dig isn't about a sunshiny, cows-in-pasture, rural idyll but takes an unblinkered look at the harsh realities of the countryside; the sheep aren't cute bundles of fluff gambolling in the fields but animals made of blood and guts; badger-baiting is no country 'sport' but pure vicious brutality.
Jones has an astounding ability to conjure feelings and sense of place by a few well chosen words. I felt I could share Daniel's grief and his commitment to the land that is part of him, the big man's animal cunning and fear of being trapped, and also the sheer terror of the tormented badger. At times, because of how immersed I felt, it was a hard book to read.
There are many disturbing passages but two stand clear for me; the horrible violence done in the name of sport to the badger and, to a lesser extent, the dogs in the baiting pit - what people find to enjoy in maiming animals or encouraging them to fight each other is beyond me -  and the chapter where a boy is taken along to a badger dig as if initiating him into becoming a 'man'. It isn't the fun experience the boy had expected but, to avoid losing face, he forces himself to join in and is persuaded that he's enjoying it.

It's a grim, shocking and stomach-turning read; the one brief moment of pure happiness that lights up the end casts the rest into even deeper darkness. It's not for the faint-hearted or squeamish. And yet, I'd say 'read it'. You'll come away moved.


Following on from this, I interviewed the author about The Dig, badger-baiting and not twisting the story to reach a happy ending Cynan Jones - author interview The Dig

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Granta Books
Genre - Adult literary fiction

Bringing Down the Giants – Cynan Jones talks about taking on Peredur.

One of the things I love about book-blogging is discovering books and authors that may not have come to my attention through my local bookstore or library. Oddly, though, my attention was drawn to Seren Books' series of re-worked tales from the Mabinogion by a clothing website. The series is now drawing to a close with Cynan Jones, author of Everything I Found on the Beach , being asked to adapt the tale of Peredur to a modern setting. The result is Bird Blood Snow and we are lucky enough today to have Cynan explain how he went about it.

I was the last of ten authors to be invited to write one of Seren’s ‘New Stories from the Mabinogion’: I got Peredur. The tale everyone else had left.

When I read it I thought: Shit. I came away with one image – the bird and the blood in the snow; and a sense that the hero of the tale was a delinquent. There were reasons why every other writer had avoided the story.

However, such was the totality of my reaction, that I had no doubt how to approach it.

Writing Bird, Blood, Snow was a “bicycle kick”. There was the surety of what I wanted to achieve and the necessity to achieve it immediately.

So I stopped thinking and just went for it.

I brought in different voices, perspectives, techniques. Tried a sense of performance, of pantomime. Half-did things. Wrote incorrectly. Caused confusion. Added pictures. Mind maps. Crossings out. I threw it all in.

There was a thrill to working like this and a necessary pace. Like a bicycle kick, I figured if I missed the target, what the hell: it would be a worthy effort, and entertaining. If I hit the net, all the better. The only issue was if I missed completely and landed on my arse.

I wasn’t going to know until I handed in the manuscript. But Penny Thomas, the series editor, had been clear: I had a totally free creative remit.

Luckily, she liked it.

When were you awarded the commission to write the book?

I was awarded the commission at the start of 2012. The book was due for October ’13 and would have been the final book in the series. Then Seren asked whether we could bring things forward a year. That was March ’12. They needed the manuscript by June. I said yes.

If I’d had longer I might have taken a different approach. I might have looked at telling the story of Peredur’s mother and father, bringing it to the point where Peredur is taken from things – the point the original tale starts. It would have been more like my other work. More considered, scant, controlled.

Was there a lot of research involved in writing the book?

I usually research heavily. It’s part of the process of limbering up to write. Given the shift of deadline, research went out of the window this time. I think that fed into the book. I’m fully aware the psychiatric treatments I describe are outdated. The mishmash of voices is deliberate. I use the anachronisms with intent.

The key work, other than the writing, was consuming the various novels and other texts I wanted to bring into the story in order to create echoes.

I wanted readers to feel that they recognised the piece, to reflect the fact that the motifs, occasions, references in the original would have been understood by the audience. I added echoes of other books. Sometimes verbatim, other times parodied or hinted. I bent Welsh nursery rhymes into the story.

What were your chief aims when deciding on the approach you took to the book?

I wanted to repeat the sense I had from the original that it was written down – and therefore ‘solidified’ – before it was ready. That it hadn’t matured properly, (much like Peredur himself), before it was sent out into the world.

I wanted to bring in the fact the original was an oral tale and would have been performed. Performance would have brought emphasis and exaggeration and spontaneity to the otherwise dry language. I had to get that back in somehow.

I wanted there to be a degree of celebration. The original tale is violent and nasty, and I couldn’t shy out of that. But there had to be something of the romp to it! It had to be visceral and colourful and compelling, but it had to be fun.

In the end, though, a book can’t rely on party tricks. It has to work as a coherent whole.

I hope it does for you. 

It most certainly did for me! Many thanks for letting us in on the working process. 

Maryom's reviews of the Seren tales from the Mabinogion can be found here

More information on Seren’s ‘New Stories from the Mabinogion’ can be found here and if you are not familiar with the Mabinogion tales then brief information on the Mabinogion can be found here and more specifically the Peredur story here

Cynan Jones' website can be found at www.cynanjones.net and you can follow him on Twitter as @cynan1975

Picks of 2012 - The Mole

My selection of from 2012 is driven from the books that have made an impression with me and I remember. Rather more in my selection than in Maryom's - perhaps I'm just greedy?


Historical Novels
Empire Of The Moghul : The Tainted Throne by Alex Rutherford
This is the first historical novel I have read and it left me wondering why I hadn't tried them earlier. Definitely I will be reading more in 2013 - particularly if they are as good as this one was.

Fantasy
Shadow Blizzard by Alexey Pehov
Shadow Prowler by Alexey Pehov

This year saw me reading the second and third books in the Chronicles of Sala trilogy and, unusually, found each book better than the last - a series well worth a read.

Liberator's Ruin by P J Johns 
This book came as a bit of a surprise but Maryom described it as "Star Wars as it should have been written". Bear that in mind and you will see that justice is a relative thing.




 

Classics/Nostalgia/Sci-Fi
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
This is a book that disappeared from my own collection many years ago and when given the opportunity I jumped at it. It ages remarkably well.




Children's
Red, White and Black by Matt Cartney
Danny Lansing is a youngster who has caught my imagination and I'm sure he will catch many more. This is his second adventure and it's even better than his first.

Wolfie by Emma Barnes
A story to delight children from 1-101

Artemis Fowl and the Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer
The final adventure for Artemis Fowl - a truly memorable last adventure it is too.

Guinea Pigs Online by Jennifer Gray and Amanda Swift 
This is about memorable and enjoyable books and this one certainly is both.

Edwin Spencer: Shadow Magic by J D Irwin
 Edwin is a true reluctant hero - But he loves IT!









YA
Ramshackle by Elizabeth Reeder
Surprisingly, of all the YA I have read this year this is the one that truly stands out. Plenty of award nominations but not enough awards - it deserves far more




 
Thriller/Crime
Uncommon Enemy by Alan Judd
A story of a spy betrayed.



Midwinter Sacrifice by Mons Kallentoft
My first Nordic Noir - and I plan on more.





The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz
A modern Sherlock Holmes - and thoroughly enjoyed.









Humour
Everything's Fine by Socrates Adams
I was warned it was a little eccentric and it was - but it was also great fun and you may never see your Sat Nav in the same light.


The Fart by Cynan Jones
During the year of the short story - here is a VERY short story that I found very amusing!



Non-fiction
Bridge of Spies by Giles Whittell 
An era that I knew less of than I thought and told with a cynicism that will amuse
 
Red Bull Racing F1 Car 2010 (RB6) Owner's Workshop Manual 
OK, it's not REALLY aimed at owners but it was a Christmas present and it was hugely informative.


How To Win Friends and Influence People
Something we all aspire to.









Short Stories

Unthology No. 3 edited by Stokes Ashley and Robin Jones 

And 2012 was the year of the short stories - well it would have been but that is actually explained in the forward to this collection that warmed me more to short stories that I have ever been. Perhaps all anthologies should be like this?

Bird, Blood, Snow by Cynan Jones

review by Maryom

The original Peredur tale recounts the adventures of a youth bent on recognition as a knight in King Arthur's court. In true questing fashion, he defends maidens, defeats giants, and eventually overcomes the witches who have cursed him. In Blood, Bird, Snow, Seren's tenth in it's New Stories from the Mabinogion series, award-winning author Cynan Jones turns the tale into a modern Quixotian romp.

Peredur has been taken by his mother to live away from the housing estates in the hope of raising him away from the culture of gangs and violence that predominates there. Of course nowhere can remain isolated for ever and the arrival of a couple of kids on fancy bikes, inspires the young Peredur to customise his own and try to join their gang. His desperate attempts to impress them lead him to violence and brutality, and, despite the attempts of foster families and social services to channel his strength into more acceptable channels, he looks on track for an unhappy, extremely violent end.

In case you haven't discovered the series yet, Seren's New Stories from the Mabinogion series takes these ancient Welsh legends and folk tales and re-interprets them in a modern, or even futuristic, setting. Bird, Blood, Snow is an imaginative re-telling of the tale of Peredur, son of Efrawg, told through a journalist's notes and interviews, copies of police and psychiatric reports and newspaper cuttings. The reader is aware from the beginning that something horrific has occurred and is being investigated by the police, though we only discover what at the very end.  Whereas the original tale had Peredur as a hero, Jones' re-telling has him as a troublesome teenage thug. The qualities that made the medieval Peredur an heroic legend - his belligerence, aptitude for fighting, his persistence in the face of opposition - are out of place today and only lead to him into trouble. It made me wonder how many of Arthur's famous knights would feel comfortable in the modern, humdrum world; maybe they're best left in legends.

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Seren Books
Genre - adult literary fiction, folk tales

The Fart by Cynan Jones

The Year Of The Short Story (cntd) 
The Mole


Cynan Jones is a true published author with two books (Everything I Found On The Beach and The Long Dry) in print more as 'work in progress'. We interviewed the author and found him to be a most sober chap.  His first novel (The Long Dry) was translated into French, Italian and Arabic but in this short story he demonstrates that he does have a sense of humour. It's not the schoolboy humour that the title may imply but a sort of mature... err... errr... schoolboy humour?

WARNING - This story contains details of a bodily function that some people may find offensive. If this is you then please look away now.

WARNING - This story also contains wry humour that may mean you want to read it on your own - whatever, enjoy it!

How long should a short story be? Perhaps not this short but it's all about entertainment and this certainly entertained me. This kind of thing has never happened to me but I can feel everything that happened in it and smile about it too!

This story can be downloaded for free from Amazon until 3rd February 2012 and if you don't own a kindle then Amazon offer free software on most any device, however I haven't seen one yet for my vacuum cleaner.

Publisher - Kindle
Genre - Adult, Humour, Fiction, Short Story

Get The Fart from Amazon

Cynan Jones - Author interview - Everything I Found on the Beach

Following on from Maryom's review of Everything I Found On The Beach by Cynan Jones, Cynan has kindly agreed to an interview.

 
His first novel, The Long Dry, was published in 2006 and went on to win a Society of Authors' Betty Trask Award. It was subsequently translated into French, Italian and Arabic. He was nominated as the Hay Festival Young European Writer for the Scritture Giovani project in '08. His second novel, Everything I Found on the Beach, was published earlier this year.

Short stories have also been published in anthologies and journals, and in 2004 his children's story 'The Piano Player's Hands' was one of the winners of Richard & Judy's Winning Stories - a national TV competition.

 

In a BBC interview you said that if you hadn't got published in two years then you would have had to get a 'proper' job. What age were you when you set this timetable and at what stage in your life?

I'd made the decision at twenty two that at twenty eight I'd give myself the two years. People make the mistake of believing that because we've talked from a young age we can write. We can't. It takes learning and practice - much like playing the piano or learning to mix paints. So between twenty two and twenty eight I worked as a freelance copywriter in Glasgow. That knocked the writing into shape. I returned to Wales at twenty eight. The Long Dry came out, Hollywood fashion, just as the time was up.

What jobs have you worked at?

I've been a supply teacher, builder's labourer, kitchen porter, freelance copywriter, wine presenter. I've worked in a wine shop. I've worked in an aquarium and animal kingdom, given out leaflets on the street. I've worked as an AD on film sets, and for three years as a tutor in a children's behavioural unit. Among other things.

One of the characters in Everything I Found On The Beach expresses their disgust at the waste in meat processing within the UK and how that waste cannot even be consumed by employees within the factory. Is this waste something you have strong feelings on?

That happens in the book because it (constantly) happens in reality. The strong feelings come against the commercial remits forced on producers, mainly by supermarkets, and the continual artificial setting of prices that dupe people into shopping at them. The system as we have it prevents a small community from being able to sustain itself with the goods it produces locally. Happily, a degree of the meat that would otherwise be wasted does make it out of the door (illegally) but doesn't go to waste.

The processing methods in the meat factory seem to be covered in some detail - is this something you researched or have you actually been involved in some way?

This was researched, but also simply absorbed through spending time around people who work in the abattoirs. You also learn a lot from farmers.

The fisherman seemed to feel, not only a lack of job satisfaction but also a disconnection from life when working in a factory. Do you feel factories are somehow 'evil'?

Once you have to feed towns and cities - which are incapable of feeding themselves - they are a simple, economic imperitive.

The character 'Hold' catches and prepares the fish and we are told a lot of the detail of the processes. Do you fish?

I fish, but I am not in it for the fishing if that makes sense! I set nets, put out pots, and fish from my kayak. But that's about feeding myself and the people near me.

'Hold' also shoots rabbits for the pot. Do you feel we should all source our own meat?

That's not feasible. I feel we should all stop going to supermarkets and instead buy meat from local butchers.

Do you have more novels planned and can you tell us anything about them yet?
The first draft of the next novel is on the desk and I'll work on it after Christmas. It centres on a sheep farm, a man who baits badgers for a living, and the story of an Italian intern sent to work on a West Wales farm during the Second World War. It's called Traces of People.

Our thanks go to Cynan and we wish him every success, not only with his current books, but also his future projects as well - we look forward to seeing them on the shelf.