13/11/2001

2001 Whitbread First Novel Award Shortlist

SHORTLIST FOR THE 2001 Whitbread First Novel Award

JUDGES
Brian Case Literary Editor, Time Out Magazine
Giles Foden Author and reviewer
Jane Rogers Novelist and Screenwriter

The following shortlist of four books was selected from 59 entries.

The Oversight by Will Eaves (Picador £12.00)
In 1983, an ordinary teenager falls in love, spurns a friend and stumbles on the ability to see in the dark. Years later, on his 25th birthday, he is bequeathed a second gift, a Victorian writing box. When a visit from the spurned friend coincides with the death of a contemporary, it is at last time to make sense of a lost time and place.
Will Eaves was born in Bath in 1967. He is currently Arts Editor of the Times Literary Supplement and lives in London.
The judges: “Will Eaves has provided a fascinating glimpse into the awkward emotional world of a young teenager who has the ability to see in the dark. Sexual comedy, family secrets and a strange item of Victorian furniture play a role in this highly-accomplished first novel.”

Something Like a House by Sid Smith (Picador £12.99)
An extraordinary, often chilling, account of Jim Fraser and his life as a deserter living through the terrible upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, when China descended into a moral and physical chaos so extreme that cannibalism became, for some, the only way of survival.
Sid Smith spent his early working life as a dustman, docker, builder’s labourer and railway worker before moving into journalism full-time. He is currently a freelance sub-editor and lives in Islington, where he is working on his second novel.
The judges: “A compelling story with startling imagery, poignant set pieces and a dark undercurrent of horror marks out this novel as a work of great originality.”

Burning Worm by Carl Tighe (IMPress £8)
Set in Poland in the turbulent months between the birth of Solidarity and the imposition of Martial Law, where Eugene Hinks, a teacher of English, finds himself witness to events that begin the destruction of communism and the reshaping of Europe.
An Irish citizen born in Birmingham, Carl Tighe has written two collections of short stories, Rejoice! and Pax:Variations as well as stories, radio plays and a stage play, A Whisper in the Wind. He is currently head of the Creative Writing Department at Derby University. The judges: “A highly evocative, tragic-comic account of Poland in the Solidarity era with Tighe expertly taking the reader into lives made up of endless queueing, incomprehensible bureaucracy and human encounters that are both touching and surreal.”

August by Gerard Woodward (Chatto & Windus £12.99)
August revolves around the Jones family, who live in London and go on a camping holiday in a farm each August from the mid-Fifties until 1971. As the years pass, however, the family idyll starts to disintegrate and the farm becomes a place drenched in memory…
Award-winning poet Gerard Woodward was born in London in 1961 and has already published three collections of poetry. He lives in Manchester, working two days a week at Manchester University where he fills the chocolate machines. He says his family “has a habit of underachieving”.
The judges: “Simply one of the finest books about the pains and joys of family we’ve read this year, with virtuoso passages of writing that lyrically and vividly evoke the complexity of family life.”

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