‘The Invisible’ by Jo Lloyd

I’ve only recently discovered Jo Lloyd’s work, but I’m so glad I have. I read her collection, The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies in a few days earlier this year, moving easily from one story to the next, always hungry to read more. It’s unusual for me to read a short story collection sequentially like that, but I was completely drawn in and didn’t want to stop.

Jo Lloyd’s prose is elegant and often beautiful, and her characters feel deeply relatable to me. This story, which won the BBC National Short Story Competition in 2019, is strikingly original. It’s told from the perspective of villagers who hear about, but never see, the Ingrams, a privileged, but invisible family, who are said to live nearby. Only one woman, Martha, claims to have seen them, and she tells the others, in detail, about their personalities and the way they live.

The villagers’ scepticism is balanced against their growing wish to believe the family are real, and soon they’re intrigued, proud to have this special family nearby. Their children admire the Ingrams and pretend to be them. But as winter arrives and the villagers’ own struggles become more pronounced, their response to the Ingrams tips towards jealousy. While the villagers are hungry and cold, surviving on “husks and air”, the Ingrams are said to be “busy at their sports and pastimes” and to “enjoy jugged hare”.

Lloyd builds a remarkable sense of resentment in the villagers, which is all the stronger for being so frustrating. They can’t see the Ingrams. It’s not even clear whether they actually exist, but the sense of injustice the villagers are left with is very real.

The story feels myth-like and ethereal in some ways, and is set in a bygone era, but the emotions it arouses are entirely recognisable and relevant to the world we live in. I recommend that you read this story, if you haven’t already. It’s an astonishing achievement.

First published in The BBC National Short Story Competition 2021, and collected in The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies, Swift Press, 2021

‘Butterflies of the Balkans’ by Jo Lloyd

It was a happy day when I discovered Jo Lloyd’s stories. The most quotable of writers, I’ll resist the temptation, otherwise I’d go on for ever. Let me just say that she writes sculpted, verve-filled sentences which, at least in my experience, are not to be found elsewhere. I mean only good things when I say that reading this story was like having a Merchant Ivory film craftily inserted in my visual cortex. And so…

Prue and Lottie, ageing, infirm and intrepid, are travelling, by means not associated with the elderly, through rough Balkan terrain in search of rare species of butterflies. The reader is given to understand that, despite sharing a range of ailments that would flatten an army, they are by no means done with life. Garbed in the costume of their day, and hence mistaken for the late Queen Victoria, butterflies are their passion, and they are in pursuit.

Liberated by widowhood, though not without personal histories, we follow them, and the various dignitaries, outriders and bandits they accrue, over land and across borders, lepidoptera in their wake, as time presses against them. Lottie intends to publish their findings, to make the world aware. On their journey we learn about their loves, their regrets, their philosophies, their irritations (not least with each other). We sense they are unlikely to fail.

I won’t describe the ending, but it contains a moment of mingled tenderness and resolution which having read you’ll do well not to weep. Prue and Lottie are fully realised characters in a story that celebrates stoicism, endurance, and the power of curiosity to galvanise – virtues of a past age.

I understand that the collection that contains this story was published during lockdown, and so somewhat overlooked. I would encourage anyone seeking fiction of the highest calibre to go out of their way to read it. Prue and Lottie, and the other characters you encounter, will not disappoint.

Published in The Earth Thy Great Exchequer Ready Lies, Swift Press, 2021

‘Work’ by Jo Lloyd

I was teaching an undergraduate creative writing class up at the University of South Wales last year and one of the students was building a collection of short stories all based around her experiences waiting tables in a bougee bistro pub somewhere in the south Wales valleys. I was reminded immediately of one of my favourite stories from one of my favourite writers. ‘Work’ sits rather awkwardly in Lloyd’s 2021 collection The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies – awkwardly in an entirely convincing and satisfying way – in that it isn’t quite as elegiac and grittily magical as the stories around it. ‘Work’ is about one of those aimless figures at a point in their life when it looks like this is it, this is what life is going to look like, and the journey has turned into a destination. I am in awe of stories that take the truth at the core of every life – that it is both wonderous and boring – and makes the most of both of those things. Dorothy Edwards did the same for her peculiar parade of well-to-dos in their country houses and retreats, kicking stones and wondering about how nothing ever happens. The last line of ‘Work’ is a gut-punch (I won’t give it away) and a return to that which is found in Edwards, although this is about the modern working-class experience – or rather that new modern class of university-educated worker bees hobbled by debt and a narrowing middle. ‘Work’ is a quiet masterpiece about that ignored (apart from by Ken Loach, maybe) strata of society, home to the people who fall between the cracks.

Published in The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies, Swift Press, 2021

‘My Bonny’ by Jo Lloyd

Jo Lloyd writes in layers, and knots. She can crush decades into a few lines. I read her work often for the tapestry of it. In this story, we follow the unfortunate, hard life of a family who live for generations in the same harbour town. In the same way Anna Wood’s story gives us the lightness of a single carefree day, Jo Lloyd weighs out the years here. The relentless sea holds your gaze as it snatches away your heroes. It’s such a skill to lay these lives down, and keep things moving, keep the drama, and feel every life as it arrives and humbly passes away.

Published in The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies, Swift Press 2021