SOMETHING WONDERFUL
Stories
In Something Wonderful, prize-winning author Jo Lloyd has crafted nine stories that delight in language and shine with wit, wisdom, and deep humanity. Whether seeking knowledge, riches, or a better life, the characters in this debut collection are united by a quest for lasting value, as they ask how we should treat our world, our work, our selves, and each other in both past and present. A vainglorious mine owner dreams of harnessing all of nature to the machinery of commerce. Two women hunt rare butterflies in a pre-First World War landscape already experiencing the first bites of biodiversity loss.
In Something Wonderful, prize-winning author Jo Lloyd has crafted nine stories that delight in language and shine with wit, wisdom, and deep humanity. Whether seeking knowledge, riches, or a better life, the characters in this debut collection are united by a quest for lasting value, as they ask how we should treat our world, our work, our selves, and each other in both past and present. A vainglorious mine owner dreams of harnessing all of nature to the machinery of commerce. Two women hunt rare butterflies in a pre-First World War landscape already experiencing the first bites of biodiversity loss. A young man tracks down the father who abandoned him inside a festival exhibit. A rural Welsh community is fascinated and angered by glimpses of its invisible, wealthy neighbors.
- Tin House
- Hardcover
- August 2021
- 232 Pages
- 9781951142728
Buy the Book
$24.95
About Jo Lloyd
JO LLOYD won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2019 and an O. Henry Prize in 2018. Her stories have appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Something Wonderful is her debut collection. She grew up in South Wales, where she now lives.
Praise
From the Winner of the BBC National Short Story Award
“Jo Lloyd has drawn out all the intensity and latent power of short fiction. All her effects are earned, and she writes with the assurance of an original mind. Line by line, her judgment is impeccable, and the whole has a substance and finesse that marks a major talent.”—Hilary Mantel, author of the Wolf Hall trilogy
“Her sentences could rouse the dead (and do, in this excellent book).” —Karen Russell
“The author shows a knack for stretching each germ of a story into a miniature epic. Lloyd’s singular talent is on full display.”—Publishers Weekly
“The short stories collected in Jo Lloyd’s Something Wonderful are luminous, startling, and diverse. . . . [they] capture telling details in a unique, powerful voice.”—Foreword Reviews
“Compelling. . . . Lloyd’s crisp prose rings clear throughout.”—The Guardian
“An extraordinary collection from a writer of rare calibre and sensibility.”—The Times Literary Supplement (UK)