My Name is Yip: Shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize

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Abandoned at birth by his father and raised by a seemingly distant mother, Yip is left to his own devices and assumed by most to be dumb as well as mute.

A sensational debut… This is violent, anarchic American history with echoes of Sebastian Barry’s Day’s Without End, but Paddy Crewe’s take is startingly original.I can't recommend it enough' Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson's Beetle'Singular and singing' Sebastian Barry, author of Days Without End'Magnificent' Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers***A New Statesman 'most anticipated' debut 2022***The year is 1815.

I love the compelling narrator… somehow a cross between Charles Dickens's David Copperfield and Charles Portis's Mattie Ross. 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. Thank you to the publishers for this review copy, now it is a western - so it's not really my go to read, but this is very well written debut.It is almost unique in the way the story is told (through the words of a fourteen year old mute) but is beautifully told in nineteenth century Georgia dialect. Short (I'm guessing 4 feet tall), completely hairless and mute, he's written off as an 'idiot' freak and not so much shunned as totally ignored. My big criticism of the book is the way it went down the travelling show route with Yip being a mute - I feel it's been done to death and it was a little too obvious. And, as Yip and Dud’s odyssey takes them further into the unknown – via travelling shows, escaped slaves and the greed of gold-hungry men – the pull of home only gets stronger.

I’m a huge lover of historical fiction and the Midwest has to be one of my fave time periods so I enjoyed being thrown back into it. And, as Yip and Dud's odyssey takes them further into the unknown - via travelling shows, escaped slaves and the greed of gold-hungry men - the pull of home only gets stronger.The timbre of Yip's voice and the constant movement of characters through desolate landscapes creates an energy that seduces the reader. 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. This is violent, anarchic American history with echoes of Sebastian Barry's Days Without End , but Paddy Crewe's take is startlingly original.

Though it was utterly heart-breaking to watch the horrors that Yip endures, I'm so damn delighted that I chose to read this novel. Yip is forced to appear in a cage, into which punters pour drink and abuse, only to be rescued once again by Dud.

It is full of lively characters, the action really picks up as the novel advances and it is quite atmospheric in its early 19th century Western-Gold Rush setting. Unusual because of its main character, Yip Tolroy, a tiny, hairless mute, and because of its nineteenth century American vernacular with its own stylistic oddities, such as seemingly random capitalisation, presumably reflecting the narrative style of its semi-educated but reflective hero. 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. 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!