Book review: Pulse by Cynan Jones (Granta, £14.99)

I first encountered Cynan Jones’s work in 2016, when I enjoyed the stripped back quality to his prose in his brief, elegant novel, COVE (Granta). As a lover of short stories, I was therefore intrigued to read his latest work, PULSE (Granta), which comprises six equally sparely written stories: Peregrine, Reindeer, Cow, Stock, White Squares, and Pulse. I read the book at one sitting - it comes in at just 173pp - but I was instantly submerged in a tranquil, sometimes threatening, sometimes primeval, natural world mainly peopled by wildlife and punishing weather. My favourite stories were Reindeer, in which the narrator, tracking down a bear, becomes the preyed upon, rather than the hunter, and Cow, a tender yet brutal evocation of the realities of farm life, set amidst swirling family tensions, during lambing season. These are stories to read, then read again, with language that is both poetic and raw.

PULSE by Cynan Jones (Granta, £14.99)