Book of the Year
2015
Angela Readman
Don't Try This at Home
And Other Stories
Angela Readman’s stories are quirky and original, sticking firmly in the mind long after you’ve finished reading them. She creates startling images, using magic realism and symbolism, all representing more than is immediately apparent. Her fictional world embraces characters you won’t have met before, but who are still somehow familiar. There’s a woman who keeps cutting her boyfriend in half in order to multiply his usefulness, only to find that each new creation reflects a different part of his personality. Another woman exhibits the sexual charisma of Elvis Presley – ‘hips a gogo, rocking onto the balls of her feet’ - whenever she’s allowed to embrace her true sexuality, and another encounters her future self in the form of a vagrant. Readman has a knack of making her characters, however unlikely, feel relevant to the human experience, and each is convincingly rendered in prose that sparkles with wit and significant detail. These stories mark Readman as an excitingly original writer who has managed to breathe new life into the short story form.
Poetry Winner
Diana Whitney
Wanting It
Harbor Mountain Press
This is a surefooted and assured set of poems with a recognisable theme - growing up and sensuality. It’s consistently challenging and interesting. The Maine Dreams, for example, about a camping and fishing expedition and about growing up is impressionistic and sensual. The section called The Winter Room gives an almost palpable sense of being snowed in for the winter. These poems are mysterious and intriguing, but remain on the right side of comprehensible. A very assured first collection.
Non Fiction Winner
Sasha Harding
A Brush with the Coast
A sumptuous book, crammed with delightful illustrations – sketches, painted landscapes, deceptively little drawings - in an attractive and simple style, depicting the journey of the author round the South-West Path, taking in Devon, Cornwall and Dorset. It’s a book of great charm, to be read chronologically, or dipped into at random, always surprising, endlessly fascinating.
Fiction Winner
Scribe
Jo Riccioni
The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store
A wholly absorbing novel which shifts deftly between Second World War Italy and the small English town of Leyton in the nineteen fifties. The experience of the Italian brothers, whose village life is disrupted by world events, is juxtaposed with an account of their new beginning in England, and their relationship with Connie, a young woman whose own life is stifled by the conservatism and prejudice of her fellow townsfolk. The interplay between these two worlds is presented with immaculate timing, delivering an utterly persuasive tale that is rich in both emotional substance and period detail.
Children's Winner
Diana Kimpton
The Green Sheep
This is a fast moving and riotously funny story about an alien who visits earth in the form of a green sheep that replicates itself every time it falls asleep. The child hero, Paul Dane, wants to protect the alien(s) from an interfering and potentially hostile adult world and finds himself in a increasingly bizarre and uncontrollable world. Fast-moving and compelling.
Kubby Bridge Books
Poetry Shortlist
Love Justice
Bracha Nechama Bonze
3Ring Press
These are poems from a vulnerable, Jewish lesbian with an attitude and a lot to say about it - poems almost like a story about her loves, her Jewish ancestors, about 9/11, her ‘unnatural’ birth, all portrayed with strong imagery. Some of it is almost-prose, but she manages to get away with it in a Whitmanesque way. The collection is unusual and brave and a very nicely produced hardback.
Occoquan
Gary Worth Moody
Red Mountain Press
Wonderfully powerful and vivid poems about slavery and female emancipation in US. Most of the poems are long and episodic. They have a strong feeling of authenticity.
Bite Sized" A mother's journey alongside anorexia
Fiona Hamilton
Jessica Kingsley Publishers
A mother’s journey alongside anorexia. Hauntingly written and with stark, black and white illustrations, it’s haunting in its totality. The poems are often very simple, laid out on one side of the page only, to stark effect. There are few words as might suit the subject and there’s a sense of the poet desperately grappling with the issue. Sometimes it’s unpoetic, almost direct reportage, but it’s always honest and the vulnerability and desperation is touching.
Boxing without Gloves
Barb Reynolds
Finishing Line Press
There are some moving and powerful poems in this collection - about the loss of a lover, of a son, of visiting a father in prison. It’s not clear if all this happened to the poet, but they could possibly be autobiographical. The poet has something clear and significant to say, with great images and good endings.
In Lands Imagination
Don Schofield
DOS Madres Press
A beautiful collection from this well-published US poet; poems to do with myths and searching for words in the Greek language, including legitimate comparisons with the Greek poet, Cavafy. Many of the poems are perceptive, vivid and powerful. Conference (p56) is a wonderful poem, and there are others. There’s a great sense of mystery and of something important behind the poems. The poet is a knowledgeable and erudite guide.
Non Fiction Shortlist
The Four Words Home
Angie Chuang
Aquarius Press/Willow Books
As I Walked out through Spain in Search of Laurie Lee
P D Murphy
SilverWood Books
This is a compelling, beautifully written book, written by a journalist with a Chinese background, principally about the lifestyle and politics of an American Afghanistan family in a post 9/11 world and the mental health issues affecting the author's own family. She travels as a trusted friend of the family when they return to Afghanistan and experiences their closeness as a family, the depth of their ties and obligations to each other. This leads her to an examination of her own family, divided and troubled. It’s a deeply-felt exploration of migration, family ties and the desire to hold on to history and tradition.
Farewell, Aleppo
Claudette E Sutton
Terra Nova Books
This is a fascinating account of the author’s father, a Syrian Jew, and his large family who eventually ended up America. There are photographs, incredible details like their experiences in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation, journeys across the world. The book offers a fascinating insight into the complexity of their culture and its ability to endure in twenty-first century America. The reader is left with a great sadness for the loss of place, the loss of tradition as it succumbs to the brutality of war.
An account of the author’s personal journey across Spain. He is retracing the footsteps of Laurie Lee, who travelled just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and wrote about his experiences in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. What could have been an exercise in imitation that couldn’t match the original turns out to be a poetic treatment of the author’s own journey. He explores his own troubled circumstances against the background of his knowledge and obsession with Lee, skilfully weaving their two experiences together in his own potent language.
Stumbling in Flats
Barbara A Stensland
Justifiedtext
Barbara Stensland started a blog in 2012 when she was first diagnosed with MS and this book is a record of her experiences. It’s chatty, funny, sad and practical. She is openly honest about the difficulties she encounters, but remains refreshingly cheerful. It’s a book that you can dip into, read something fascinating, and gain fresh insight on an aspect of life that may or may not be connected with MS.
A Soldier's Best Friend
Stephen Paul Stewart
Sandstone Press
This is a book about dogs, the dogs that are trained and do active service with the British Army in Afghanistan, sniffing out drugs and IEDs. The book is packed with real stories with the dogs at the centre of the action, going back again and again, saving lives and proving that they really are best friends to their handlers. There are pictures, successes and tragedies here, astonishing and moving. A very well researched book, well edited and compelling.
Short Fiction
Shortlist
Einstein's Beach House
Jacob M Appel
Pressgang
Einstein’s Beach House is a brilliant collection of stories offering incisive portraits of American life, with an unapologetic emphasis on its eccentrics. The stories are sharply observed, teeming with wholly original creations, often hilariously funny, and each is more than the sum of its parts. Appel uses comedy to comment on the world in subtle ways, never losing sight of his characters’ humanity, even as he reveals their often tragic frailties. Like the best humourists he is aware of the inextricable relationship between the former and the latter.
Burrard Inlet
Tyler Keevil
Parthian Books
Tyler Keevil’s style is deceptively simple, masculine and raw, but deeply authentic. The stories are set in Vancouver and the characters are ordinary people, carrying out their lives on or by the water, against a background of snow-topped mountains. These are people whose work is often hard and grinding, inevitably at the mercy of the elements. There is great beauty here, with the brutal energy of landscape and emotion, all steeped in cold and sea and weather.
Acquainted with Squalor
Nath Jones
Createspace
Nath Jones offers vivid glimpses of American life that engage intelligently with that country’s myths and nightmares. Ostensibly they are domestic tales of ordinary people living unremarkable lives, but these commonplace scenarios are always loaded with significance because Jones has the knack of finding meaning in the mundane. They are moving and compassionate, steering clear of sentimentality. The writer’s empathy and compassion shine through.
Over Her Dead Body
A B Morgan
Hobeck Books
Gabriella Dixon’s first warning that there’s something wrong is when a representative of the local council turns up on her doorstep to collect outstanding debt for a funeral. It turns out to be her own funeral. What seems at first to be a simple mistake develops into a much more alarming situation when Gabriella discovers that her death has been registered with all her connections and she has no access to money. The situation escalates and becomes much more sinister until it’s clear that someone has a grudge against her. This is when her solicitor introduces her to Peddyr and Connie Quirk, a couple who run a detective agency. This is an exciting thriller with a very clever and well thought-out plot. It’s full of surprises and – a fast read that’s hard to put down. There are plenty of unpleasant characters, all of whom could be responsible for Gabriella’s dilemma, but Peddyr and Connie, a husband and wife team, make delightfully eccentric detectives, with plenty of ideas and resourcefulness, who nevertheless only catch up with the truth once Gabriella has taken matters into her own hands. The cover tells us this is Book One of the Quirk Files, so it seems there are plenty more thrills in store for the future.
Fiction Shortlist
The Silver Gaucho
Jackie Ballantyne
The Doby Press
Travelling across the world, this is the story of Lockie, a journalist from New Zealand, who is persuaded – against her better judgement - to investigate the disappearance of a young man from a powerful Argentinean family. His brother is The Silver Gaucho, a legendary television hero watched and admired all over the world. It’s a novel about family and failing relationships, exploring Lockie’s own failure to manage her life. There's a lot to admire here. It's entertaining and full of quirky interesting characters, with moments of powerful and poetic descriptions. The writing is lively and colourful and the Argentinian setting is interesting and well drawn.
Still the Cicadas Sing
Gregory Gregoriadis
Matador
A moving coming of age novel set in Greece, spanning from the 1930s to the present day. With lyrical prose and powerful story-telling, Gregoriadis takes us through the traumatic events and politics in the lead-up to the Second World War, the German occupation and the aftermath of the war. We see the workings of a small established community in a suburb of Athens through the clear-eyed observations of Alkinoos, a young boy at the outbreak of war. In the face of brutality and starvation, obsessed by a local German girl, he is forced to confront his conflicting loyalties and make complex moral decisions. It’s only as an old man that he can finally unravel some of the events of the past and come to an understanding of what happened.
Prayer of the Crow
Christopher Holt
Createspace
This is the enthralling story of Lucas Harrogate and his journey into the uncharted regions of war-torn Mozambique. Presented in the form of a journal found years after his death, the tale hovers cleverly between reality and hallucination, offering dispatches from the Heart of Darkness as harrowing as Conrad’s. The book is engaging throughout, offering not just evocative images of Africa, but subtle allusions to its colonial past, and the compulsions that have lured westerners to this region with calamitous consequences. Haunting, gripping, and often unsettling.
Rats
Joe Klingler
Cartosi
This is a good, well written page-turner, written with staccato prose and sharp scene-setting. A techno-thriller that begins in Alaska with an assault on a pipeline using exploding devices called Rats. It develops into an international hunt for the perpetrator, featuring a General from the US Army, and his lover, Claire Ferreti, an army sniper. The plot is complex and well controlled.
Invisible Threads
Lucy Beresford
Quartet Books
This sure-footed and well-researched novel creates a compelling story about a psychiatrist whose desire to discover the truth about her dead husband takes her from her home in England to modern Delhi. There she becomes embroiled in India’s horrific sex industry, and a riveting mystery that the author unpacks with patience and dexterity. Particularly impressive is the unflinching, often harrowing examination of India’s sex trade, and the country’s attitude to women in general. Beneath the exotic beauty of India there is a darkness that Beresford takes laudable pains to expose, and which she portrays with convincing depth and arresting clarity.
The Scrapbook
Carly Holmes
Parthian Books
This is a vivid novel by a clearly talented writer about three generations of a dysfunctional family, and their history of making bad decisions about men. Fern, the youngest, returns to the family home to look after her ailing mother Iris, and begins to research the whereabouts of Lawrence, Fern’s absent father to whose memory Iris has devoted her life. The toxic relationship between Fern and Iris is particularly well-rendered, and the latter’s fixation on her lost lover is a touching portrayal of self-destructive obsession. A well-structured, fluent novel with strong characterisation.
Living Treasures
Yang Huang
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This is a compelling novel exploring 1990’s China against the long shadow of the recent past through the eyes of Gu Bao, a female student. We see her as a child with her grandparents in a small village, where she witnesses a starving panda desperate to feed her cub, and later in the aftermath of the terrible events in Tiananmen Square. At its heart is the injustice of the one-child rule and the brutal corruption of officials in their determination to enforce the law. Yang Huang writes with fresh, clear simplicity, and the voice of her narrator is strong, clear and moving.
Glassmusic
Rebecca Snow
G52-Conundrum Press
Glassmusic achieves a lot in a short space, successfully evoking the world of early twentieth century rural Norway and creating a rite of passage novel for Ingrid, the main character, and her blind father, who creates music from filled glasses of water. It explores in a thought-provoking way how religion can uplift or distort into disturbing behaviour. The writing is deceptively spare, creating its own beauty, which complements the simplicity of the farming setting.
A Storm in Summer
Rosemary Sturge
Createspace
This is a historical crime novel, set in the English Civil War and told, refreshingly, from the point of view of the Roundheads rather than the more usual romanticised view of the Royalists. There is a good sense of suspense as one mystery leads to another and historical details are accurate and convincing. An enjoyable, satisfying read.
Children's Shortlist
Where the Poppies Grow
Hilary Robinson
Strauss House Productions
A picture book about the First World War for young children. Using rhymes and delicate pictures that hint at the reality without being brutal, it tells the story of Ray and Ben as they progress from children playing in a poppy field to soldiers in the trenches. It treads a subtle line between gentle story telling and harsh reality - a pleasing book with a moving message.
The Time Smugglers
Rosie Morgan
Liscarret Creations
This is the second in a series of books set in Cornwall. The four protagonists, based on Arthur and his knights, are drawn into a secret parallel world where nothing is as it seems, and where the Crow Man and his colleagues are plotting vengeance and destruction. It’s a world where apparently ordinary people possess secret knowledge, and help comes from unexpected sources. Fast moving, dramatic and exciting, with pleasing pencil drawings placed throughout, and with a promise of further adventures to come.
The Awakening
Tim McGovan
WR1 Digital Publishing
A ghost story about a haunted schoolhouse that has been converted into a family home. It connects a teenage girl, whose father has recently died, with a terrible tragedy that took place in Victorian times. It’s dramatic and exciting and the use of shapeshifters keeps the reader uncertain. Ellie-Mae is a strong heroine that young teens can identify with.
Trouble in Teutonia
S P Moss
Circaidy Gregory Press
An adventure story, a sequel to an earlier novel, about Billy’s ability to travel back in time and encounter his grandfather in earlier periods of his life, long before Billy was born. Here Billy is transported to his grandfather’s RAF base somewhere in Germany in the Fifties. It’s the beginning of the Cold War. There are mysterious goings-on, spies, a prototype jet fighter and the grandfather of a present day bully, who turns out not to be as his grandson portrays him in the twenty-first century. Exciting, dramatic, page-turning.
St Cuthbert's Wild School for Boys
Ingrid Skeels
Createspace
A well-told story about a school for children who don’t like school and the their fight to save it from closure. The lessons are not what you’d expect in this school. Science might involve building models out of Lego models, while English lessons mean listening to a story out of doors while cooking on a campfire. This is a book which will appeal to all children who would rather be out doing things rather than sitting in a classroom being forced to learn – in other words, most children.