My Name is Yip: Shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize

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Both an entertaining tale of gold, murder and the impulse for revenge, and a tender coming-of-age story amid the lawlessness of the American frontier. Other than my objection to the style which is only personal preference, the story is interesting and original.

Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry * Mute but eloquent, Yip comes thrillingly into our midst to unfurl his singular and singing book of revelations. Lastly, what took Yip from such hopelessness to a life of serenity with the wife that was briefly mentioned? The characters of Dud and Yip are well crafted and I wish he would have done a little more with “Mama”. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

Mostly for me, it reads like some of the old Western mountain men and trapper books that I used to love, but Yip has a tone and spirit of his own. He was an object of ridicule and fear, with other children running away from him, which forced him to keep himself to himself, passing his time beneath the old elm tree that he loved. The bar is high when it comes to coming of age westerns, and despite a different and appealing protagonist narrator, 14 year old Yip, this falls way short. Meanwhile, the doctor went to the tavern and pronounced that the Tolroy boy would only ever be a simpleton.

There are several moving moments and ruminations on the meaning and nature of life in this brutal society where there is a casualness to the death and violence which seem endemic to it.He grows up left to his own devices by pretty much the entire town, until a kind old man teaches him to read. I love the compelling narrator , somehow a cross between Charles Dickens's David Copperfield and Charles Portis's Mattie Ross. The images still flowing through my mind as if it were a movie I'd just finished watching, i felt every bit invested in the journey of Yip Tolroy that when it came to an end i really felt it, I'm sad there's no more pages to turn. Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers * Yip Tolroy may not speak, but his voice soars off the page in Paddy Crewe's terrific debut novel. Later, after Yip is separated from Dud, he’s gathered under the wing of the roguish Jim Coyne, travelling onwards in his wagon.

My Name Is Yip is a tremendous novel, one that both harks back and burns the way forward, that is built of sentences that sing and roar. An uneventful life, until gold is discovered nearby and Yip is caught up in a bloody, grievous crime forcing him to flee. Purporting to be the written account of Yip’s adventures narrated from the comfort of later life, it explores a society in flux, one about to turn its back on religion and embrace greed and individualism. My Name Is Yip is a tremendous novel, one that both harks back and burns the way forward, that is built of sentences that sing and roar.This is violent, anarchic American history with echoes of Sebastian Barry's Days Without End , but Paddy Crewe's take is startlingly original. I liked the way the events and thoughts, such as the fate of a slave and Yip's reaction to it, are underplayed, which make them all the more powerful. At its heart, is a gripping adventure story, full of cryptic references to past and future events, some of which are resolved while others await a sequel. He leaves behind the only life he’s ever known, and embarks on a hazardous journey filled with menace and violence, experiencing firsthand a travelling show and it’s evil and cruel owner, escaped slaves, and men who care for nothing and no one, as they worship their only God - gold! One October night in the small town of Heron's Creek, Georgia, Yip Tolroy is born, the cord snaked around his fragile neck, his skin a deathly white.