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Cynan Jones is a talented young Welsh writer and this is the second of his books I have read after The Dig. Once again, this is spare, bleak, poetic and visceral, and once again he is inhabiting the minds of people on the borders of society facing elemental struggles.The book opens with a body being found on the beach, with wounds that suggest foul play, but we only discover its significance much later in the book. The two main characters are Grzegorz, a Polish immigrant who works in an abattoir...
A very atmospheric tale about chances in life. Making decisions and what's following once a decision has been made. It's also about guilt and love unanswered because it seems impossible.
If I explain my emotional response to this book it will likely give up the ending, so I’ll refrain. This is a story about people who are neither here nor there. The in between place of leaving something terrible behind, not finding much traction to change this, and living on hope for one big chance. Grzegorz is a Polish immigrant desperate with longing to provide for his family. Desperate enough to do most anything, to cross boundaries no longer useful in his internal demand for a chance. Hold i...
What I love about Cynan Jones’s writing is the way all his characters experience existence, not merely the main figures, but all of them. There are no caricatures in his work. Each is permitted his or her own store of dignity and motive force. All are fragments of some lost and broken force and each is afforded a spirit and a share in humanity. It’s something that’s very much in accord with the strong moral thrust of his work. When I started reading this novel, I’d positioned Jones a sort of inh...
An interesting read but ultimately too heavy handed. Every sentence seemed to be triple underlining that the story was going to have an unhappy ending. Lots of, the bird was trapped, if it had made one choice differently in its life it would have been free, but once it was on the path it was trapped, in a net, etc.
A harsh reality lyrically laid out in a manner that reminded me of No Country for Old Men. Two men, their story told in alternating chapters, desperate and willing to take a chance just to make it, to prove something to those whom they love.
A book about responsibility... that sounds a whole heap of fun doesn't it? And indeed, Everything I Found on the Beach isn't any part of a heap of fun. Cynan Jones has however created two compelling characters in Hold, the native fisherman burdened with responsibilities from a young age so that he knows no other way, and Grzegorz the Polish migrant also weighed down with responsibilities he choses to shoulder. These two men are kindred spirits - they have a similar grave manner and respect for a...
In his introvert style cynan jones tells this tale of brutality with much compassion for the main character. There is suggested more than explicitly spoken of the naivity of this man, his love for his family, the duality to do well but being attracted by what he finds on the beach. He decides to introduce himself in a world he does not know with fatal implications. Everything is suggested more than told explicitly; one has to guess much of what happens between the lines. Like in the Dig Cynan Jo...
another amazing read. another favorite of the year. review to come
This is a brilliant writer at work in the grand tradition. Steinbeck and Hemingway seem influential, but his voice is truly unique. He takes you up close to the smallest of details and explores large universal themes in the process. The struggles of a beetle and a pigeon are as important as those of the humans in this dark novel. The reader is forced to struggle at times too. Very effective!
This is the 4th book I have read by Cynan Jones. I'm not sure I can read any more books by this person. His novels are so so sad and depressing..The Long Dry, The Dig, and Cove. And then this book. Pretty much everybody dies in the end. Every character has a relative who has died some sad death. His descriptions of food, of ferry boats, of bugs, of pigeons, etc. etc. were so long winded...and yes, also so sad. It got to the point I was just skimming pages to see how things ended. There was one d...
That was amazing! Jones' writing reminded me of Annie Proulx or Cormac McCarthy. He captured the very essence of what it is to be poor and unable to get out from under. To have the circumstances of your life keep you from doing any better than those before you. He captured this so well that I had to take breaks every few pages to keep from crying. I always read Annie Proulx this way especially. It hurts the heart. By the same token, it makes you count the blessings you have.
Jones doesn't reach the same balance between show and tell, scarcity and richness as in his Cove and his The longest dry.
I found it harder to get into this than Cynan Jones' other novels, but the quality of his writing saw me through and it was worth it for the pay off.
This is not a book for the faint-hearted. There were many times I wanted to put it in the freezer. It's pretty obvious from the beginning that things are not going to go well for Grzegorz, a Polish immigrant who is enslaved by poverty, as he ruminates about wastefulness he sees in the slaughterhouse where he works. "'This gratefulness to an animal,' he thought, 'is what's gone here. There is a sorrow for it, as there always is, but it is without gratefulness and eventually you just go numb to it...
This is Cynan's second book and it is nothing short of brilliant. The talent shown in The Long Dry develops further in this book as we follow two men that come from very different lives yet are strangely similiar. First we meet Hold, a Welsh fisherman who is struggling to make ends meet, raising another's son, as he discovers a body on the beach that holds a possible way to make life a little easier. Then we meet Grzegorz, a Polish immigrant who shares a house with his own family and that of ano...
exquisite writing and portrayal of human emotions, and very much rooted in the landscape.