Charting a course somewhere between Life of Pi and Paul Kingsnorth’s Beast, Cove is a minimal, occasionally mysterious, man-versus-the-elements fable. Its unnamed protagonist has set out to sea to scatter his father’s ashes; his pregnant wife remains ashore. There is a storm; he is struck by lightning; he forgets his purpose but knows he must survive.
It’s over in fewer than 100 pages but there’s plenty under the surface of the terse, telegraphic prose: even Jones’s title does double duty, hovering between the human and topographical senses. Then there’s the wren’s feather that the unlucky sailor keeps in his mobile phone: an ancient charm against shipwreck encased in a modern amulet – even when the latter is ruined by water, it is still superstitiously retained. With its brief paragraphs spaced like stanzas on the page, Cove repays attentive parsing.
Cove is published by Granta (£9.99). Click here to order a copy for £8.19
