My Name is Yip: Shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize

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While I was thoroughly entertained, that is not to say there isn't some substance to be found beneath all the action. As a teenager, events catapault him into a life on the run which lead to a series of adventures and run-ins with numerous colourful and often dangerous characters. It’s also a rollicking, page-turning wild west adventure, populated by a cast of arresting grotesques, with luminous imagery and an unforgettable protagonist. I thought I would really like this book, it checks off so many items of interest, but I couldn't feel or muster any connection to what I was reading, unfortunately. The representation of charming travelling circus manager, Jim Coyne, draws sneakily from Fagan, the supposed protector of Oliver Twist.

Cast as nothing more than a ‘simpleton’, Yip begins his narrative reflecting on his adventurous life in The American Midwest, by scribing on his chalk slate with his three remaining fingers.When they tested his reactions, he writhed and squirmed and was in obvious pain but was completely silent. Gold is discovered nearby, and Yip commits a grievous crime that leaves him with no choice but to flee. This is violent, anarchic American history with echoes of Sebastian Barry's Days Without End , but Paddy Crewe's take is startlingly original.

It’s here that Crewe’s powers of evoking landscape and character really begin to soar, with Melvillian prose full of striking unexpected phrases.Mama could barely look at him, but they muddled along, each in their own separate bubble of existence. Here we feel there’s something of Dickens’s orphaned heroes in Yip, a young man who tangles with society’s evils, but has the potential to come good. I also felt like this story had no concept of time and I couldn’t tell how long Yip was away from home.