Cynan Jones's (The Dig) Everything I Found on the Beach is a remarkable novel, quiet but powerful. Three unacquainted men on the west coast of Wales aspire to better their respective circumstances, and to that end make a series of decisions that have dire consequences. Patient pacing accompanies a relentless momentum, moving toward an ending that inspires dread.
Hold is a Welsh fisherman, consumed by his sense of responsibility. He is devoted to the wife and son of his recently deceased best friend; Hold made a promise to this friend that worries him constantly. Grzegorz is a Polish immigrant who brought his family to Wales for a better life but found disappointment. He works shifts at a slaughterhouse whose practices offend him. Finally, there is Stringer, Irish and a middleman in a criminal hierarchy that he feels has taken advantage of him for too long. These men find potential solutions to their problems in a scene on the beach: a boat, a dead man and a package.
Jones's writing is deceptively simple, belying his poetic mastery of language: "The first time he ever shot rabbits he was alone and it was with a shotgun and he had been looking for a long time...." His tone is deliberate, resolutely unexcitable despite the extraordinarily high stakes of his story.
Such a bleak story and austere style may sound gloomy, and it is true that this is a serious book that rewards careful reading. But Everything I Found on the Beach is also thought-provoking and somehow uplifting, in its beautiful, artistic consideration of life itself. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia