Hemingway meets R.S. Thomas in these sensuous, sparse and brutal stories.

In this collection of six short, dark stories we enter a world filled with spectres and violence. A man hunts and is hunted by a strange bear; in another story, a man haunted by the ghost of a tormented schoolmate attempts to steal falcon eggs; facing his own questions of fatherhood, a farmer goes through a complicated birth with a cow held in a crush. Here, the natural world is an unsettling force, something to be resisted, or to pit oneself against. Many of the characters find themselves in a world that is changing around them, facing forces beyond their control, and their response is to employ what power they have through acts of violence, whether that takes the form of the kidnap of Supermarket delivery drivers, or the shooting of rubber ducks. Pulse is an exploration of a certain form of masculinity, through stories told in careful, sensory prose.