Books

AK Blakemore wins Desmond Elliott Prize; and a round-up of this week’s book news

A preview of Saturday’s pages; RB Kelly shortlisted; Ingrid Persaud wins again

AK Blakemore has won the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize for The Manningtree Witches

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Martin Doyle
Fri Jul 2 2021 - 10:47

AK Blakemore has won the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize for best debut, with her historical novel about the English witch trials of the 17th century, The Manningtree Witches (Granta Books), which the judges praised as a “stunning achievement”.

Lisa McInerney, a previous winner and one of this year’s judges, said that Blakemore “takes limited historical detail and, with what seems like effortless grace and imagination, crafts a breathing, complex world full of wrenchingly human characters, and tells us their stories in language that bears endless rereading, so clever and unexpected and pleasurable it is”.

Reviewing in The Irish Times, Jessica White wrote: “Using historical documents, real-life figures and artistic license, Blakemore’s debut novel imaginatively explores the circumstances around the mid-1600s Essex witch hunts. Set in an England ravaged by civil war, protagonist Rebecca West must navigate a community that punishes disobedience where poverty and desperation are rife.

“Blakemore’s background in poetry enables her to write some gorgeous prose on the nature of evil and the social and religious structures that uphold it, personified in self-appointed Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins. A striking reflection on Puritanical patriarchy and the occult, The Manningtree Witches taps into contemporary feminism while remaining true to its Early Stuart setting. A novel where the devil is – literally and figuratively – in the details.”

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Reviews are Paschal Donohoe on Gordon Brown’s Seven Ways to Change the World & Go Big: How to Fix Our World by Ed Miliband; Mia Levitin on The Promise by Damon Galgut; Sarah Gilmartin on The Paper Lantern by Will Burns; Daniel Geary on Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White by Patricia Sullivan; Arnold Fanning on W-3: A Memoir by Bette Howland; Michael Longley on Kilclief & Other Essays by Patricia Craig; Martina Evans on new collections by Audrey Molloy, Justin Quinn, Catriona Clutterbuck and Andrew McMillan; and Jonathan McAloon on Male Tears by Benjamin Myers.

Edge of Heaven, the debut novel by Belfast author RB Kelly, has been shortlisted for the 2021 Arthur C Clarke Ward for the best science fiction, along with The Infinite by Patience Agbabi; The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez; Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang; The Animals in that Country by Laura Jean McKay; and Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes.

“As always, the shortlisting process was closely argued, and it was especially tough for the judges to get the shortlist down to just six,” Dr Andrew M Butler, chair of the judges, said. “To everyone’s surprise, each of the titles is a debut novel. This has never happened before.”

Kelly, describing her novel in The Irish Times, wrote: "Part of the reason I write dystopian scifi is because I was a kid in the 1980s and 1990s, when environmental breakdown was just beginning to hit the news. Edge of Heaven explores what it might be like to navigate a society that's outgrown the only planet we have to live on; a society that has lived so long with changing climate patterns and catastrophic soil collapse that resource scarcity and the resulting systemic inequalities have just become business as usual."

The winner will be announced in September.

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Ingrid Persaud’s Love after Love (Faber) has won The Authors’ Club 2021 Best First Novel Award. The guest adjudicator, novelist Michèle Roberts, presented the £2,500 award at a reception at the National Liberal Club in London yesterday. She said: “This bittersweet story of domestic abuse, loss, separation, heartbreak and redemption is leavened with deadpan humour. The reader bears witness, as the characters do, to how when conventional family ties are destroyed by violence, new, more flexible ones can be woven with compassion, tolerance, and hard-won love.”

Love after Love also won the Costa First Novel Award in January. Read Paul McVeigh's Irish Times review here.

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Sri Lankan author Kanya D’Almeida has won the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. D’Almeida, 34, from Colombo, Sri Lanka, was named the winner by British-Jamaican actress Dona Croll who presented the online ceremony. D’Almeida is the first Sri Lankan to win the overall prize and the second to win for the Asia region.

Her winning story, I Cleaned The –, is a story about ‘dirty work’: domestic labour, abandonment, romantic encounters behind bathroom doors, and human waste. The Asia judge, Bangladeshi writer, translator and editor Khademul Islam, described it as “a life-affirming story of love among the rambutan and clove trees of Sri Lanka – love for a baby not one’s own, love for a high-spirited elderly woman. Love found not among the stars but in human excrement. Literally. And all the more glorious for it.”

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HarperCollins Ireland is to publish Mickey Harte’s memoir, Devotion, in October. Harte, Tyrone manager for 18 years, is one of the most successful Gaelic football managers of the modern era. He suffered a huge persponal tragedy in 2011 when his daughter Michaela was murdered on her honeymoon in Mauritius.

Harte said: “Although it has afforded me the opportunity to revisit many happy memories of my family life and time in football, this book has not been easy to write. It is my hope, however, that by sharing aspects of my own experience, I can offer people something to help them face their own challenges, whether they be grieving the loss of a loved one or simply struggling to find a sense of purpose or hope for the future.”

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Mary Robinson, the former Irish president and a campaigner for climate justice, is to unveil a new Irish Writers Centre Climate Writing Group today.

The aim of the initiative is to encourage writers to incorporate environmental awareness and promote positive climate change solutions in their work

A new initiative to tie in with the organisation’s 30th anniversary, the Irish Writers Centre Climate Writing Group: Writing for a Change will take place once a month and is free to all who wish to attend. Classes will take place monthly from July 7th up until December 8th. The group will be led by author Lynn Buckle.

Irish Writers Centre Director Valerie Bistany said: “Mrs Mary Robinson is one of the world’s foremost leaders in the fight for climate action, and so it is a deeply appropriate honour to have her introduce our own Climate Writing Group: Writing for a Change. We are thrilled to bring environmental advocacy to our work at the IWC, as we strongly feel that writers have a crucial role to play in framing and communicating the urgency of the current climate crisis. I am confident that writers can change public perception by weaving climate positive principles and solutions into their creative storylines. Writers, through their stories, have the power to demonstrate that the climate crisis is a personal issue.”