My First Colouring Book

"A fantastic, uplifting book from the Welsh writer of the year 2007"
Katie Gramich

Love, angels, addiction and death; they''re all here in My First Colouring Book – a new collection of short stories from the prize-winning author of Mr Cassini and Mr Vogel.

Themed on all the colours of the rainbow – and a few extra for luck – these stories and essays paint a superbly crafted picture of criss-crossing lives. They are spoken by an unexpected variety of voices: a young girl has adventures in the night; a surgeon becomes a shepherd; a middle-aged man seeks love for the last time.

In a virtuoso performance, Lloyd Jones takes the traditional short story form and twirls it round his little finger. And his travel essays, sent from the compass points of his home country, are not to be missed.

"I think the short story is Lloyd''s genre… its brevity intensifies the poignancy which he evokes so well. I cried and laughed while reading this book – and though often about addiction, abuse, betrayal and guilt, these stories are also wildly celebratory; they make you feel glad to be still alive. Lloyd''s idiosyncratic and memorable characters are often obsessive, usually in search of something – in other words, very much like most of us."
Katie Gramich, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Cardiff University

Former farm-worker, newspaper editor, chamber-of-horrors employee and lecturer, Lloyd Jones lives in Llanfairfechan, on the north Wales coast. Following a bout of alcoholism which nearly killed him, he set off on an epic walk around Wales, the inspiration for his first novel, Mr Vogel, which won the McKitterick first novel prize 2005. His second novel Mr Cassini won Wales Book of the Year 2007.