annecater
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Waterstone's New Voices 2009In February last year Waterstone's picked 12 new writers that it predicted would dominate the literary landscape in the years to come. The company's crystal ball is in pretty good nick - the list included several future prizewinners, including Aravind Adiga, then unknown but now a Man Booker prizewinner. Here we exclusively announce 2009's New Voices, with critical verdicts from Kate Saunders
Black Rock by Amanda Smyth
Serpent's Tail, £10.99
Celia's mother died giving birth to her, and her English father went home to Southampton. She lives with her Aunt Tassie in Black Rock, Tobago - until she is driven away by Tassie's no-good husband. This likeable and resourceful girl then finds sanctuary, employment and a great deal more in the house of Dr Emmanuel Rodriguez and his homesick English wife. Smyth is Irish-Trinidadian, and her writing is as lushly beautiful as the landscape she describes - it's the kind of novel that leaves your head filled with gorgeous pictures.
The Vagrants by Yiyun Li
Fourth Estate, £12.99
In a remote town in China a woman wakes up sobbing. On this day in 1979 her 28-year-old daughter is to be be executed for her public loss of faith in communism. For educational purposes, local schools and work units must attend the execution. The citizens of the town, however, defy the authorities to stage a protest. Based on a true story, this is a mesmerising novel about the reality of living with oppression. Yiyun Li moved from Beijing to the US in 1996 and she writes about everyday Chinese culture with the bone-deep knowledge of the insider. Grim, but leavened with humour and humanity.
A Kind of Intimacy by Jenn Ashworth
Arcadia, £11.99
Annie is hugely fat and knows that she is not to everybody's taste, but is “a minority interest, like collecting Stilton jars”. We meet her as she is leaving her old life to start again in a new house. It soon becomes flesh-creepingly apparent, however, that Annie is weird. She tells ridiculous lies and develops an unhealthy obsession with the attractive young couple next door. This is not just a cry for help - it's a loud scream, and someone is bound to get hurt. Ashworth, who has worked as head librarian in a prison, evokes a damaged mind with the empathy and confidence of Ruth Rendell.
The Earth Hums in B-flat by Mari Strachan
Canongate, £10.99
Strachan (right) spends part of the year on a narrow boat, and a fondness for unorthodoxy gives her girl-growing-up story its unique flavour. Gwennie Morgan is 12 and convinced that she can fly. In her dreams she flies over her small Welsh town, seeing strange things that she can't get the adults to explain. This is the 1950s, so many things (domestic violence, Mam's increasingly odd behaviour) must never be mentioned. When a neighbour suddenly disappears Gwennie decides to search for him. She collects clues like a real detective - but are her deductions correct? A warm and touching, but blessedly unsentimental, novel.
Ten Storey Love Song by Richard Milward
Faber & Faber, £10.99
Pay attention; the future looks like this. Richard Milward (main picture) is a 24-year-old from Middlesbrough, and his second novel is uncompromisingly set out in a single paragraph. The solid lump of prose looks a little daunting, but it leads the reader into a kind of drug-fuelled La Bohème set in a tower block. Bobby the artist stays in his flat, working on his paintings and abusing every imaginable substance (starting with “pills-on-toast” for breakfast). “He dreams of getting a £1,000-a-day coke habit,” we are told; and the dream becomes reality when Bobby is discovered by a London art dealer. Brash and loud, with startling flashes of pure poetry.
Ablutions: Notes for a Novel by Patrick de Witt
Granta, £10.99
“One night, after hours, you are alone and running your hands under the hot water when the voice asks if you aren't through with your ablutions yet.” The man addressing you is the narrator, describing the ghost he sometimes meets in the bar where he works. He knows that she must be real, because he has never heard the word “ablutions”. He is an alcoholic, an abuser of liver- destroying aspirin, and his marriage is in tatters. He describes the various losers hanging around in the bar and - with equal detachment - his own slow disintegration. A brilliant inside view of addiction by an author who once worked as a barman in Hollywood.
The Street Philosopher by Matthew Plampin
HarperCollins, £12.99
The year is 1854, and Thomas Kitson is on the battlefields of the Crimea. He is a reporter for the London Courier, this being the first “media” war. His boss, Richard Cracknell, is a crazed Irish genius, and Kitson has to work hard to keep him out of trouble. Then the boat from Blighty arrives, bearing a beautiful woman and an idealistic young illustrator. The stage is set for high drama, and it all comes back to haunt Kitson two years later, when he is living precariously in Manchester. Plampin tells such a galloping good story that the poor quality of his writing doesn't really matter.
Guernica by Dave Boling
Picador, £12.99
The brutal bombing of Guernica lives in the world's memory because of Picasso's painting, and the artist is one of the historical characters appearing in this rich stew of a novel (Baron von Richthofen is another). But they are only bit-players. Boling, an American married to a woman from the Basque country, has created a multilayered saga about love, family loyalty and the fierce patriotism of this indomitable region. In 1935 Miguel Navarro falls foul of the Spanish Civil Guard and flees to Guernica. He falls in love with the beautiful Miren - but tragedy is just over the horizon.
The Piano Teacher by Y.K.Lee
HarperPress, £12.99
Lee (below) was once a features editor at Elle in New York, but not a trace of magazine gloss finds its way into this lovely novel - it has an old-fashioned solidity and craftsmanship and effortlessly recreates the atmosphere of postwar Hong Kong. In 1952 a buttoned-up Englishwoman named Claire Pendelton arrives at the colony with her dull husband. When she is hired by a powerful Chinese businessman to teach piano to his daughter, Claire falls in love with his mysterious English driver. Will Truesdale survived the Japanese occupation during the war and carries dangerous knowledge about his employer. The transformation of Claire is beautifully handled.
An Equal Stillness by Francesca Kay
Weidenfeld & Nicolson £12.99
Francesca Kay has lived all over the world, which perhaps accounts for her ability to see England with such a fresh eye. Jennet Mallow, born in 1924 in an austere Yorkshire rectory, is an instinctive and passionate artist. When the Second World War is out of the way she goes to art school in London and falls wildly in love with the sexy, charismatic David Feaver. Their affair leads to marriage and parenthood, and so begins Jennet's long struggle to be a good wife and mother without sacrificing her art. Visual art is notoriously difficult to write about, but McKay has a rare gift for painting with words.
The Rescue Man by Anthony Quinn
Jonathan Cape, £12.99
In 1939 an historian, Tom Baines, is studying the architectural past of Liverpool - and he knows that, with war looming, much of it may soon be destroyed. He becomes fascinated by the life of a forgotten Victorian architect, Peter Eames, who apparently committed suicide at 33, and the story shuttles between these two men. The title comes from the job that Tom takes on during the war, when he joins a Heavy Rescue team that gets the wounded out of collapsed buildings. Quinn, best known as a film critic, was born in Liverpool, and the city is the heart of this novel.
Days of Grace by Catherine Hall
Portobello, £10.99
Nora Lynch, 12, has been evacuated to a rectory in the country, a million miles removed from her home in the East End of London. The colours of everything amaze her: “The slices of meat that came away from the Reverend Rivers' carving knife were as pink as a blush.” Nora has been “chosen” by Grace, the daughter of the house, and the two girls are soon as close as sisters. Something shattering happens, however, that Nora will not be able to resolve until she is at the end of her life. This heartfelt story is possibly a little heavy on the melodrama but nonetheless is gloriously gripping.
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