The Dig

A quietly overwhelming masterpiece of love, degeneration and the merciless landscape of grief -- Eimear McBride
I treasure Cynan Jones's The Dig for engaging with [a] marginal pastoral tradition, showing the depth of its attachments to nature, and for refusing to treat those attachments in a romantic, nativist way -- Helen Macdonald ‘The six books that made me’ * Guardian *
A powerful book... about violence, loss and the different ways one can be trapped. It is absolutely unflinching in its descriptions of the savagery the badgers face... [yet] the violence is never gratuitous... There is certainly a deliberate gnarled quality to the novel's prose. Its language is slightly askew, forcing the reader to linger... This is a novel with a heft far beyond its size -- Evie Wyld * New York Times Book Review *
Jones' novellas, with their carefully chiselled prose and explicit descriptions of archetypal figures, gradually acquire a mythic patina. The Dig is a fine exploration of masculinity, grief and violence. Savour the evolution of this distinctive literary voice. -- Keith Hopper * TLS *
Jones's sense of place is acute, and his passion for the landscape - for its colours, its creatures, its textures, its scents - is absolutely magnetic -- Sarah Waters, author * Fingersmith *
Jones's use of language is frequently stellar... There is no doubt that he is one of the most talented writers in Britain' * Independent *
Jones addresses you with a poetic directness that owes something to Dylan Thomas... These are sentences that are written not for the eye or the ear but for some deeper sense... Deeply moving, but not sentimental, [this] is a book that will get in your bones, and haunt you * Telegraph *
A marvellous novel... There are echoes of Ted Hughes, Cormac McCarthy, Ernest Hemingway... It can be read like poetry, letting the words resonate in the skull -- Angus Clarke * The Times *
Extraordinarily powerful... [Its] necessary and central brutality is more than redeemed by the transcendent quality of Jones's writing... In its marriage of profound lyricism and feeling for place, deep human compassion and unflinching savagery, this brief and beautiful novel is utterly unique -- Melissa Harrison * Financial Times *
Written with a beautifully blunt simplicity, The Dig is moving, evocative, and utterly compelling -- Jon McGregor, author * Even the Dogs *
By turns chilling and haunting, The Dig is a visceral indictment of the continuities between the use and abuse of animals, and a meditation on the casual violence of ordinary men -- Patrick Flanery, author * Absolution *
[There] is a series of often dramatic and beautifully drawn set-pieces... [and] when is deep in these physically resonant scenes, Jones can be strikingly effective. He has a wonderful eye... The central story around which The Dig is organised is powerfully immediate' * Sunday Times *
Tenderness and brutality are folded out together in this chiselled gem of a novel... Jones has a poet's eye for detail but his sentences are pared to the bone -- Maggie Fergusson * Intelligent Life *
There's something of John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy and the Old Testament to this short, sharp, brutal and bewitching tale... Beauty and barbarity, tenderness and heartlessness are mixed in prose that reads like stark poetry. There's almost too much truth in this unforgettable novel. But great beauty too -- Robert Bound * Monocle *
The Dig explores its central themes - loss, isolation, nature - through, dry, punch storytelling. Each sentence has been neatly sculpted to develop a rich poetry from the stuff of rural life * New Statesman *
Take equal pinches of Hemingway and McCarthy, mix them with a huge spadeful of wild Welsh and wondrous originality, and you get The Dig. It's brave and necessary and relevant in that it steers us into a contemplation of the world's beauties by forcing us to consider their extinction. It is angry and heartbreaking and profoundly moving. Truly, it stirs the soul -- Niall Griffiths, author * Runt *
With this quietly huge little book Cynan Jones sets a thrilling new standard for our generation, and shows what a transporting device the short novel can be. I read it twice, heart in mouth, and still cannot quite believe how good it is. Extraordinary gifts in craft and art, combined with mesmeric storytelling, create a book which no-one will put down until it is finished, and which leaves the reader in no doubt: here is a real writer, a real star in the ascendant. 'I felt as though I became a better reader, and a better writer, while I was lost in The Dig -- Horatio Clare, author * A Single Swallow *
It reads like Cormac McCarthy meeting Ted Hughes down a dark country lane... Thoroughly memorable -- John Self * Asylum Blog *
It took me over completely, the brutality in it and the tenderness. It is wonderful to read writing that's so hard and true about the land, the land as lived in now, and from within, not as observed from without or as some place in the past. We need that. Not one of Jones' plain strong words is wasted, and Wales comes through in the rhythm of the sentences as well as in what they describe -- Georgina Harding, author * Painter of Silence *
This parable of modern rural life is lyrical but tough, stylish and poetic, and its themes of grief, wonder, and violence have a resonance far beyond the Welsh valleys where the story takes place -- Gavin Francis, author * Empire Antarctica *
The plot is winningly sparse. ... [The first] twenty pages possess a sharp exactitude, like a taut line of barbed wire. The detail of the prose is remarkable -- Lucian Robson * Literary Review *
Powerful [and] indelible... [There are] memorable phrases on almost every page * Independent *
Beautiful * Chronicle *
A powerful novel about isolation and loss, written in wonderful pared-down prose * Observer *
Give me this sparse, tense novella over Hardy any day. ... The book is haunting and moving without ever being sentimental. A beautiful contrast of violent, unrelenting pressure and searing, intimate moments * Case for Books blog *
A short novel that packs the compact force of a lightweight boxer... Jones has hewn an earthy, flinty language... We can only wonder at what this singular voice might create next * Metro *
Tenderness and brutality are folded together in this chiselled gem of a novel. Jones has a poet's eye for detail -- Maggie Ferguson * Intelligent Life *
Important and superbly written * Tivy-Side Advertiser *
Terse and beautiful... The Dig turns words into scalpels then cuts to the quick. Buy it in spades. 10/10 -- Jon Gower, author * Too Cold for Snow *
A work of breathtaking scale and ambition... [with] a rare poignancy and profundity' * The Oxonian Review *
A perfect novella: excruciatingly brutal and extraordinarily beautiful at the same time * Wexford Echo *
Rich and deeply felt... combines a visceral emotional punch with a beautifully detailed sense of place... Brief yet powerful * New Welsh Review *
Slim but very powerful... Jones ratchets up the tension in this brutal but mesmeric book * Good Book Guide *
A small, beautifully-formed tale of loss set against the brutality of badger baiting... Jones proves that the short novel can be as epic, and stylistically demanding as a long one -- Arifa Akbar * Independent *
Accomplished and compelling... The language of the book is unsentimental and blunt, richly evoking sound and colour and a contrapuntal, nocturnal lack of colour... Extraordinary * Dundee University Review of the Arts *
Incredibly visceral and astounding * Savidge Reads *
The Dig has stuck with me throughout [the year]... Jones is his own man, making authentically British - Welsh - myths with plenty of horror and muted emotion -- John Self ‘Book of the year’ * Asylum *
[This] strange and dark work of landscape fiction caught my eye - and ear - this year; brutal, regional, stripped back and pumped up -- Robert Macfarlane ‘Book of the Year’ * Big Issue *
The Dig is forceful in its simplicity, grace and depiction of human cruelty. An outstanding novel -- Katie Kitamura
Imagine Cormac McCarthy transposed to Wales. Infuse a hint of Hemingway, a dash of Eugenio Montale and a lick of José Saramago, and you might arrive at Cynan Jones. The Dig remains one of my most uncomfortable reading experiences to date. From the first sentence to the last, the tone is controlled, economical, alarmingly brutal and tender -- Tishani Doshi * New Indian Express *
Those sounding the knell for traditional stories may have a hard time explaining books like Cynan Jones's The Dig, a swift, elegant novella about a farmer, a badger hunter, and the inevitable clash of their opposing lives... a darkly beautiful book... The Bottom Line: The Dig is a short, powerful story that wraps contemporary issues about modern farming in stunning, earthy language * Huffington Post *
[A] brutal, lyrical, slim novel... while the action of the story is compelling, the real pleasures lie in Jones's language and meditations on grief. In prose that calls to mind both the severity of Cormac McCarthy and the psychological lucidity of John Updike... the focus on the criminal underbelly of agrarian culture poses a refreshing counterpoint to back-to-the-land idealism * Publishers Weekly *
Brilliantly evoking the murkier side of the countryside, Jones has a powerful voice as well as a fine touch for atmosphere * Country & Town House *