This is the writer's voice new fiction from the New Yorker. I'm Deborah

Treisman fiction at the New Yorker. On this episode of the writer's voice,

we'll hear Conan Jones read his story Pulse

from the May 6th, 2024 issue of the magazine.

Jones is the author of six books of fiction,

including most recently the novel Cove and the story collection still aside.

His previous story in The New Yorker, The Edge of the Shoal, was the 2017 winner of the BBC National Short Story Award.

Now here's Conan Jones. Pulse.

He footed off his shoes, the logs balanced on an arm and tug the door shut, behind him the

rain slanted into the open porch in tight rattling

crescendos, pulsed with a crashing wind.

It's foul out there, he called, but he wasn't in the main room.

He saw the signs of water ingress in the planks below the cabin windows,

a wet stain that caught the light.

Every autumn, every autumn, he thought we say will seal the planks. She put towels down where the rain had been driven in.

When he stepped from the door mat onto the wooden floor he felt the damp sock under his left

big toe, the result of prizing off the right shoe. With the wind baffled by the walls, the spat

of the rain seemed even louder as it thrashed the low metal roof. She'll be trying to get

the little one down for an afternoon nap. That's why she hasn't responded.

The little one whom they hadn't expected to have. The child who was at once a present fundamental

fact, but even though she was walking now and talking, still bewildering.

He went into the middle room, knelt by the wood burner and set the logs down, placing them

...