Work Sucks. What Could Salvage It?

Cynan Jones hasspent much of his life in the county of Ceredigion, in the west of Wales, where storms often sweep in from the Atlantic and the Irish Sea. His story this week is set during a particularly unsettled period, when the wind is fierce and the ground waterlogged and the weather more terrifying than exhilarating. In the story, a couple living in a cabin in the countryside fears that one of the trees on their land is going to come down on a nearby power line, endangering them and their young child. This, Jones says in an accompanying interview, is based on something that actually happened to him: “I had no sense I would write about it until much later, and even then I was hesitant. Trying to reframe a real event into a working piece of fiction is more challenging than making something up from scratch.” The story captures the kinetic power of the storm, and the underlying anxiety it provokes in those experiencing it. As one of the fictional characters, a worker for the power company, observes, “New storms, see. Twenty-year storms all the time now.”

—Cressida Leyshon, deputy fiction editor