Oxblood: Winner of the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award

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My father was a police constable who was stationed at Longsight (and, for a time, at Benchill) and so, even though he would never have shared the reality of his job over the dinner table, as a teenager in the 60's I was savvy enough to sense some of what he was experiencing. Occasionally he would return home with his hand in plaster, after helping to beat a drunken Irishman into his cell. Victoria is a young woman who is working at a diner and has no real idea what she wants to do with her life. So instead she uses her brother going to law school as a reason for not going to school and furthering her education. While her brother is away in Italy for school, her and her best friend have end up living together with the occasional stop in from her Vic’s freeloading boyfriend. I loved Vic’s best friend and how she helped her not be so uptight about thing sometimes. We all need a person like that in our lives. As for the freeloading boyfriend he needs to go, and I was so happy when Vic finally stood up to him. Over the course of a few days, the Dodds women must each confront the true legacy of the men who have defined their lives; and seize the opportunity to break the cycle for good. I went into this book with no expectations, I had never read anything by this author before and wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. I am so glad I did it this way. The prologue hooked me immediately I needed to know why she was in this situation and how in the world she was going to get out of it. To witness the mid-meal apocalypse: James Ellroy, Ishmael Reed, Zora Neale Hurston, Blaise Cendrars, Begum Rokeya, Marco Vassi, Alan Moore and Anna Kavan. The best and worst things about where you live?

Congratulations, Tom, on winning the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. What does it mean to you? Vic has the natural observational powers of a long-time spy, and this skill makes her an asset to the team. Her abilities remind me of a cross between Cassie from The Naturals series and Veronica Mars. So of course, I enjoyed watching her notice everything. Cheers. It couldn’t be more surreal and encouraging to win an award that has championed so many writers whose work means something to me. Tell us about your latest novel, Oxblood. It took eight years to write?

Much of my poetry has been inspired or provoked by the blues’ ] Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?

AnnaLisa completed her undergraduate degree in Human Services at Wingate University and her Master's degree in Counseling from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. During her thirteen years in the Human Services field, AnnaLisa worked with children in group homes and foster care, and spent two years in private practice counseling individuals, families, and couples. We are thrilled that Tom Benn has won this year’s Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award. Oxblood is fiction at its most urgent and affecting, and readers will be hugely grateful to discover it as a result of this well-deserved accolade. The award carries terrific prestige and Waterstones are proud to partner with the Sunday Times to reach as many new readers as possible.‘ Novelist and screenwriter Tom Benn has been named winner of the 2022 Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award for Oxblood, a novel that judge Oyinkan Braithwaite called a ‘bountiful, fearless work of literary art’, daringly exploring masculine violence and fractured female agency through the domestic lives of three generations of working-class women in 1980s Manchester. The Dodds family once ruled Manchester’s underworld; now the men are dead, leaving three generations of women trapped in a house haunted by violence, harbouring an unregistered baby.

There are a few plot contrivances that I found problematic, most notably the preface, and the rather pat ending, but despite those I enjoyed the story and would gladly read more in the series.