Lori & Joe

Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2023 and the James Tait Black Prize 2024

Lori & Joe live in a quiet valley where one day is much like another. One morning Lori finds Joe dead. She could call an ambulance but what difference would it make? Instead she goes for a walk. As she makes her way through the fog her thoughts slip between past & present, revealing a marriage marked by isolation, childlessness & a terrible secret.

Lori and Joe have lived in the Lake District for many years, in a quiet valley where one day is much like another. Bringing Joe his regular cup of coffee one morning, Lori finds him dead. She could call an ambulance, but what difference would it make? Instead, she heads out for a walk over the fells. As she makes her way through the November fog, Lori’s thoughts slip between past and present, revealing a marriage marked by isolation, childlessness and a terrible secret she’s never disclosed.

Arnold’s musical prose merges form and content to express what cannot be communicated through language alone. Taking place over the course of a single day, yet revealing the secrets of a marriage of many decades, Lori & Joe is a sparse, intimate and deeply moving story of entrapment and isolation, and of a life in which desire is continually overcome by inertia: nothing changes and nothing is ever (re)solved.