Subscribe to Read | $0.00
Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Quick and Easy Sign Up!
It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.
Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Quick and Easy Sign Up!
It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.
Read Anywhere and on Any Device!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
Read HereDescription: Cynan Jones' electrifying new series of short stories set in the very near future. Water is commodified and the Water Train that feeds the city is increasingly at risk of sabotage. And now ice bergs are set to be towed to a huge ice dock outside the capital city - a huge megalopolis that is draining the country of its resources.1 - The Water Train:2 - Paper Flowers: an immigrant worker can't help but be awed by the extraordinary ice dock.3 - Butterflies: transported by the...
Technically flawless. However...
This was the last of the 153 books I read in 2019, and was an interesting way to finish the year's reading. Like Jon McGregor's The Reservoir Tapes, this was commissioned for a BBC Radio 4 series of 15-minute dramas on Sunday evenings.This is something of a departure for Jones, whose other books are set in the present day, in agricultural and coastal communities. It is a dystopia set in a Britain 30 to 40 years into the future, a country in which water supplies to the big city (London is never n...
Stillicide is a collection of short stories that also relate to a whole, larger narrative. Set in the not-too-distant future, people in Britain struggle to survive as water becomes scarce. They have devised a way of bringing icebergs down from the North to melt and irrigate dry river beds. Terrorists stalk water pipes, species become extinct and illness is rife. Through it all are tales of hope and love, perfectly executed by Cynan Jones.Stillicide started life as a Radio 4 series (I am currentl...
There is a lot going on here that I loved. The imagery, and the flow, and the underlying sense of urgent, life-or-death matters, and the quiet fatalism of this prose all blend together to make this work an entertaining and satisfying read. That should be enough. Some reviewers felt a little adrift given the formlessness of the storytelling but I enjoyed the drift and flow. The ways it disappointed me are personal, having more to do with my preference and my biases than they have to do with eithe...
I was easily enticed by the climate change theme of this book and the beguiling title, which is helpfully defined on the first page. However, I didn’t initially realise that it originated as a series of stories that were read on Radio 4. This accounts for the fact that the narrative has, how can I put this, too much breathing room. Visually, the pages have line breaks between every short paragraph and this makes the whole feel insubstantial. The central concept of water shortages resulting in an...
This collection contains 12 short stories around shortage of water in the near future. Not my cup of tea and/or water. My favourite story was "Letter", that's what made me give this 3 stars. Cynan Jones has written better books as far as I am concerned.
Cynan Jones' writing is very spare and very beautiful. But his stories are often quite surface and intangible. Sometimes that works, other times less so.This novel began life as a spoken word production for BBC radio, collecting several stories set in a future (or alternate present) world where water had been commodified and water trains serve communities. An iceberg is on its way to London to be docked as a primary water source. We follow several characters whose lives are affected by these eve...
It is the near future, not that far from where we are now, a place where water has become a scarce commodityThe city demands water, it is bought in on The Water Train and guarded by man and machine against sabotage.Dry rivers mean that there is not enough water. Icebergs are calved and dragged south. A new Ice Dock is planned and then expanded, it will evict more people than was first thought. The city tenses as the protests start.In this stark new world, people are trying to live; a marksman wh...
A series of twelve interconnected stories set in the U.K. in the near future where the country is in a cycle of drought and flood. The water train travels through the country, protected by soldiers and subject to sabotage, this is elegant climate change fiction from one of the best living British writers.And yet... while I’ll admit I struggled with the audio format (and listening to it over the space of 10 weeks didn’t help either) I still don’t think this is Jones’s best novel. Beautiful writin...
Stillicide is twelve interlinked small stories of climate change, water shortage, overcrowding and the longing, love and loss which make us human. Sparse and mesmerising, Cynan Jones’ latest offering is an intense, compact thing of beauty. Language wielded with care, conviction and the precision of a surgeons knife. The clarity of narrative and gradually accumulation of quiet emotion creating something profound, indelible & quite beautiful.
4.5Review to write,,,,,,,,,
From BBC radio 4:Episode 1 of 12Cynan Jones' electrifying series set in the very near future - a future a little, but not quite like our own.Water is commodified and the Water Train that feeds the city is increasingly at risk of sabotage. And now icebergs are set to be towed to a huge ice dock outside the capital city - a huge megalopolis that is draining the country of its resources.Against this, a lone marksman stands out in the field. His job is to protect the Water Train...From one of the mo...
Sparce and immediate, Stillicide is set in the near future where limited water supply is under constant threat of terrorism and families are being forced out of their homes by the construction of an ice dock which will allow the city to import a gigantic iceberg from which they can directly harness the meltwater. This atypical dystopian novel-in-stories still carries much of the poignancy and power I've come to love about Jones and his writing. Human conflict, both internal and external, are alw...
