The 2024 McKitterick Prize Shortlist and Winner
For the third year in a row, I was a first-round judge for the McKitterick Prize (for a first novel, published or unpublished, by a writer over 40), helping to assess the unpublished manuscripts. The McKitterick Prize is in memory of Tom McKitterick and sponsored by the Hawthornden Foundation. Thus far an unpublished manuscript has not advanced to the shortlist, but maybe one year it will!
On the 2024 McKitterick Prize shortlist (synopses adapted from Goodreads):
Jacqueline Crooks for Fire Rush (Jonathan Cape, Vintage, Penguin Random House) – “Set amid the Jamaican diaspora in London at the dawn of 1980s, a mesmerizing story of love, loss, and self-discovery that vibrates with the liberating power of music. When Yamaye meets Moose, a soulful carpenter who shares her Jamaican heritage, a path toward a different kind of future seems to open. But then, Babylon rushes in.”
Chidi Ebere for Now I Am Here (Pan Macmillan, Picador) – “We begin at the end. The armies of the National Defence Movement have been crushed and our unnamed narrator and his unit are surrounded. As he recounts the events leading to his disastrous finale, we learn how this gentle man is gradually transformed into a war criminal, committing acts he wouldn’t have thought himself capable.”
Aoife Fitzpatrick for The Red Bird Sings (Virago) – “West Virginia, 1897. When young Zona Heaster Shue dies only a few months after her wedding, her mother, Mary Jane, becomes convinced Zona was murdered by her husband, Trout, the town blacksmith. As the trial rises to fever pitch, with the men of Greenbrier County aligned against them, Mary Jane and Zona’s best friend Lucy must decide whether to reveal Zona’s greatest secret in the service of justice.”
Greg Jackson for The Dimensions of a Cave (Granta) – “When investigative reporter Quentin Jones’s story about covert military interrogation practices in the Desert War is buried, he is spurred to dig deeper, and he unravels a trail that leads to VIRTUE: cutting-edge technology that simulates reality during interrogation. As the shadowy labyrinths of governmental corruption unfurl and tighten around him, unnerving links to his protégé – who, like Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz, disappeared in the war several years earlier – keep emerging.”
Wenyan Lu for The Funeral Cryer (Atlantic Books, Allen & Unwin) – “The Funeral Cryer long ago accepted the mundane realities of her life: avoided by fellow villagers because of the stigma attached to her job and under-appreciated by her husband, whose fecklessness has pushed the couple close to the brink of break-up. But just when things couldn’t be bleaker, she takes a leap of faith – and in so doing things start to take a surprising turn for the better.”
Allan Radcliffe for The Old Haunts (Fairlight Books) – “Recently bereaved Jamie is staying at a rural steading in the heart of Scotland with his actor boyfriend Alex. The sudden loss of both of Jamie’s parents hangs like a shadow over the trip. In his grief, Jamie finds himself sifting through bittersweet memories, from his working-class upbringing in Edinburgh to his bohemian twenties in London, with a growing awareness of his sexuality threaded through.”
The Society of Authors kindly sent me free copies of the six shortlisted novels. I already had The Red Bird Sings and The Funeral Cryer on my TBR, so I’m particularly looking forward to reading them as part of my 20 Books of Summer – which I’ve decided might as well contain, as well as all hardbacks, only books by women.
I was familiar with Fire Rush from its shortlisting for last year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. The other three titles are new to me but sound interesting, especially The Old Haunts – at 150 pages, it will be perfect for Novellas in November.
My fellow judge Rónán Hession, whom I got to meet very briefly on a Zoom call, wrote: “It is exciting to judge a prize and encounter such a depth of talent. Though [the books] hugely varied in subject matter and style, the writers on the shortlist all impressed me with the clarity of their creative vision and their narrative authority on the page.”
The winner and runner-up were announced in advance of the SoA Awards ceremony in London yesterday evening. As in other years, I watched the livestream, which this year included captivating speeches by the Very Revd Dr Mark Oakley, Dean of Southwark Cathedral (where the ceremony took place) and Kate Mosse. And what a thrill it was to see and hear my name on the livestream!
Winner: Wenyan Lu for The Funeral Cryer
Runner-up: Chidi Ebere for Now I Am Here
In the press release announcing the winners, Hession said, “Wenyan Lu has created an unforgettable debut, brimming with personality and written with a sense of consummate ease. The Funeral Cryer is such a funny, warm and original book. An absolute gem of a novel.” I can’t wait to get started!
Other notable winners announced yesterday included:
- Tom Crewe for The New Life (Betty Trask Prize for a first novel by a writer under 35)
- Jacqueline Crooks for Fire Rush (Paul Torday Memorial Prize for a first novel by a writer over 60 – how perfect for her to win this in place of the McKitterick!)
- Soula Emmanuel for Wild Geese (Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize for a novel focusing on travel)
- Cecile Pin for Wandering Souls (Runner-up for the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize; and a Somerset Maugham Award travel bursary)
Book Serendipity, Late 2020 into 2021
I call it Book Serendipity when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something pretty bizarre in common. Because I have so many books on the go at once (20+), I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents than some. I also list some of my occasional reading coincidences on Twitter. The following are in chronological order.
- The Orkney Islands were the setting for Close to Where the Heart Gives Out by Malcolm Alexander, which I read last year. They showed up, in one chapter or occasional mentions, in The Frayed Atlantic Edge by David Gange and The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields, plus I read a book of Christmas-themed short stories (some set on Orkney) by George Mackay Brown, the best-known Orkney author. Gavin Francis (author of Intensive Care) also does occasional work as a GP on Orkney.
- The movie Jaws is mentioned in Mr. Wilder and Me by Jonathan Coe and Landfill by Tim Dee.
- The Sámi people of the far north of Norway feature in Fifty Words for Snow by Nancy Campbell and The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave.
- Twins appear in Mr. Wilder and Me by Jonathan Coe and Tennis Lessons by Susannah Dickey. In Vesper Flights Helen Macdonald mentions that she had a twin who died at birth, as does a character in Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce. A character in The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard is delivered of twins, but one is stillborn. From Wrestling the Angel by Michael King I learned that Janet Frame also had a twin who died in utero.
- Fennel seeds are baked into bread in The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and The Strays of Paris by Jane Smiley. Later, “fennel rolls” (but I don’t know if that’s the seed or the vegetable) are served in Monogamy by Sue Miller.
- A mistress can’t attend her lover’s funeral in Here Is the Beehive by Sarah Crossan and Tennis Lessons by Susannah Dickey.
- A sudden storm drowns fishermen in a tale from Christmas Stories by George Mackay Brown and The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave.
Silver Spring, Maryland (where I lived until age 9) is mentioned in one story from To Be a Man by Nicole Krauss and is also where Peggy Seeger grew up, as recounted in her memoir First Time Ever. Then it got briefly mentioned, as the site of the Institute of Behavioral Research, in Livewired by David Eagleman.
- Lamb is served with beans at a dinner party in Monogamy by Sue Miller and Larry’s Party by Carol Shields.
- Trips to Madagascar in Landfill by Tim Dee and Lightning Flowers by Katherine E. Standefer.
Hospital volunteering in My Year with Eleanor by Noelle Hancock and Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession.
- A Ronan is the subject of Emily Rapp’s memoir The Still Point of the Turning World and the author of Leonard and Hungry Paul (Hession).
- The Magic Mountain (by Thomas Mann) is discussed in Scattered Limbs by Iain Bamforth, The Still Point of the Turning World by Emily Rapp, and Snow by Marcus Sedgwick.
- Frankenstein is mentioned in The Biographer’s Tale by A.S. Byatt, The Still Point of the Turning World by Emily Rapp, and Snow by Marcus Sedgwick.
- Rheumatic fever and missing school to avoid heart strain in Foreign Correspondence by Geraldine Brooks and Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller. Janet Frame also had rheumatic fever as a child, as I discovered in her biography.
- Reading two novels whose titles come from The Tempest quotes at the same time: Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame and This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson.
- A character in Embers by Sándor Márai is nicknamed Nini, which was also Janet Frame’s nickname in childhood (per Wrestling the Angel by Michael King).
- A character loses their teeth and has them replaced by dentures in America Is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo and The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard.
Also, the latest cover trend I’ve noticed: layers of monochrome upturned faces. Several examples from this year and last. Abstract faces in general seem to be a thing.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 