'Britain's answer to Donna Tartt' Sunday Times
In the summer of 1952, Joyce and Charlie Savigear are waiting on a railway platform in the quiet English countryside. The siblings have just been released from borstal to start a new life as apprentices at Leventree, an architecture practice with a difference.
The architects who've chosen them are Florence and Arthur Mayhood, a married couple motivated to give young offenders second chances. At first, they seem to offer the Savigears a steady path to happiness. But when a menacing figure from Joyce's past comes knocking, they are lured back to the world they left behind. Will the Mayhoods' goodwill be enough to steer their young apprentices away from danger, or will the darkness of their past catch up with them?
'Benjamin Wood is a beautiful writer and this is his best novel yet, both gripping and unputdownable' Andrew O'Hagan
'The Young Accomplice shows the difference between a book that slides down the surface of things, and one that digs it claws into you and sticks there' The Times
'Benjamin Wood is building a sublime body of work. This masterful, suspenseful novel is his best yet' David Whitehouse
Title: The Young Accomplice
Author: Wood, Benjamin
ISBN: 9780241438244
Binding:
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Publication Date: 2022-06-16
Number of Pages: 368
Weight: 0.4801 kg
Britain's answer to Donna Tartt * Sunday Times *
Wood is a seriously talented writer, able to enter the minds of his characters with eerie precision. The Young Accomplice is an involving tale of revenge and responsibility, which, while it devastates, also tells us that new lives can be built among the ashes * FT *
A British novelist who deserves more attention than he has had . . . Wood blends storytelling punch with literary sensibility . . . The Young Accomplice shows the difference between a book that slides down the surface of things, and one that digs it claws into you and sticks there * The Times *
Benjamin Wood is a beautiful writer and this is his best novel yet, both gripping and unputdownable. Like people in Thomas Hardy, his characters surge from the page, and the mystery unfolds with a sureness seldom seen in contemporary British fiction
-- Andrew O'Hagan, author of Mayflies
His most original [novel] yet . . .
The Young Accomplice has already been
compared to Thomas Hardy novels and there are echoes of Tess of the d'Urbervilles in the story of a vulnerable young woman whose past catches up with her. Wood is also
wonderful on the intricacies of love and architecture as a means of enriching people's lives. It's
a novel that feels as if it has been imagined with slow and tender care - and I suspect it will be cherished by readers for a long time * Sunday Times *
Blown away by
A Station On The Path To Somewhere Better . . .
Dark and disturbing, but wise, moving and beautifully written. Am immediately going to seek out his other books now. What a writer -- Richard Osman on A Station On The Path To Somewhere Better
Benjamin Wood is building a
sublime body of work.
This masterful, suspenseful novel is his best yet. It swallows you up. I love it -- David Whitehouse, author of About A Son
A novelist to watch * The Times, on A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better *
A
resounding achievement . . . Rich, beautiful and written by an author of
great depth and resource * Guardian, on The Ecliptic *
Exhilarating, earthy, cerebral, frank and unflinching . . .
A masterfully paced and suspenseful read * Independent, on The Ecliptic *