Author(s): Jo Lloyd

Novel

'Jo Lloyd does more with single sentences than a lot of people do in entire novels' - Sara Taylor

Whether seeking knowledge, riches, or a better life, the characters in these stories are united by a quest for lasting value, as they ask how we should treat our world, our work, our selves, and each other. A vainglorious mine ownerdreams of harnessing all of nature to the machinery of commerce. Two ladies of a certain age hunt rare butterflies in a pre-First World War Europe already experiencing the first bites of biodiversity loss. A climate campaigner must choose between personal happiness and political action. A rural Welsh community is fascinated and angered by glimpses of its invisible, wealthy neighbours.

Exact and lyrical, compassionate, and full of wit and truth, this debut collectionfrom Jo Lloyd, winner of the BBC National Short Story Award, announces a fresh new voice with a sensibility all her own.

Review:

Jo Lloyd writes stories that have the epic sweep, sly humor, and cold, thrilling depths of Mavis Gallant and Jim Shepard, as well as an idiosyncratic brilliance that is hers alone. Her sentences could rouse the dead (and do, in this excellent book).

-- Karen Russell
Jo Lloyd's voice is clear-sighted and timeless, and the stories in her debut collection are magnetic and prescient -- Sara Baume

I would read anything with her name on it

-- Zoe Gilbert

Beautifully balanced and well-proportioned, the stories in The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies add up to a compassionate portrait of the ways that people are frail and all the different ways that they can fail

-- Jessie Greengrass

The collection reminds me of nothing so much as a series of incredibly detailed black and white photographs, each of which perfectly captures an aspect of existence that I've brushed against before but never taken the time to consider. And it's not enough that each story is perfect; Jo Lloyd does more with single sentences than a lot of people do in entire novels

-- Sara Taylor

These stories have a relish for language and an enviable precision that announce a crisp, exciting new voice in short fiction

-- Richard Beard

Prizes: Winner of BBC Short Story Award 2019 (UK).

Author Biography: 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, Southern Review, and elsewhere. The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies is her first collection. She grew up in South Wales, where she now lives.