Oxbloodshows us that there are few places literature can't take us, if the writer is brave enough, and gifted enough' FRANCIS SPUFFORD I don't even know where to start with this book. First, Netgalley cataloged this as a YA book. It is so not a YA book. Victoria is twenty and a boring twenty at that. But she is not alone in her dullness. All of the spies and crime boss just feel kind of flat. In no way did this novel about international intrigue actually intrigue me. The whole book feels clunky like it doesn't quite fit together correctly. Several times while I was reading I thought that it felt like it needed a good editing which is why I wasn't surprised when I discovered that "Oxblood" started it's life as self-publish. It's a familiar story that has been told many times and has been told better many times. 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. As much as I would like more on Italy, this is a thriller with a lot of action. It does a great job with characterization. Vic speaks and acts in a manner that the reader can understand why she might be called Vic instead of her full name of Victoria. You can imagine what Ian sounds like with his British accent. We do not spend a lot of time with her brother Gil, however, we do learn so much about him through Vic's eyes and memories. The reader can understand why they are so close and why Vic cannot stand by and wait for someone else to find and help her brother. But, she gets involved in something that is a lot more dangerous than she realizes. My one slight criticism is that the setup (whilst important to give context to the characters) phase of the book laboured the point a little. Without giving anything away, I'll just say I pushed myself through the first half of the book a little bit, but read the second half more or less in one sitting.

Over the course of a few days, Nedra, Carol and Jan 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’ve been a pilgrim for art and film: visiting Den Bosch for Bosch’s paintings, and Poulsbo and North Bend [in] Washington for Twin Peaks. I’d love to reach Oxford, Mississippi, for a Faulkner pilgrimage. What is the best writing advice you have heard? It's the being in a hollow metal tube thirty-five thousand feet in the air and crashing in a fiery blaze that gets me." The story covers a few days and also a few decades, which is handled masterfully. The parallels are so subtle that I’m only now working some of them out. There’s filth and misery, but there’s a lot of warmth and support too.

One of those rare books where place and time are conjured so effortlessly, the cast of characters drawn with so much ease and grace' -- MONA ARSHI Tom Benn is the winner of the 2022 Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award for his novel, Oxblood Martin Doyle

The Barrows were not as steeped in crime as the Dodds - but I can hear the echoes of my own childhood. As she starts to work with the team and gets to know all of them, we see her start to grow confidence, as well as feeling like she is a part of something and helping. I loved how the whole team worked together yet, was each an individual as well. They are their own little family that will do anything to protect one another.I love YA thrillers and strong female characters, so when I saw this on NetGalley, I knew I had to take a look and see what it was about. Admire the art over the artist, the work over the worker. People transgress and disappoint but art can transgress to transcend. Which public event affected you most? Victoria Asher is coming to terms with the loss of her parents in a plane crash. The only family she has left is her brother, Gil.

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. Tom Benn is one of publishing’s best kept secrets. His story about the struggles of three generations of women in a Manchester crime clan has been rendered with such care and specificity that it feels wholly original. The result is a rich, dark, atmospheric family saga that contains so much buried love and anger and grief and sexual jealousy and bitter disappointment. In fact, it’s one of the best contemporary novels about disappointment that I have ever read. Yet somehow I emerged from it exhilarated! I’m thrilled that we are rewarding a young writer who has been working below the radar for a while and is now finally getting the attention he deserves.‘ To me, genres are ever-evolving narrative frameworks that expose our fears and fantasies, offering writers trenchant tools to interrogate, repurpose and vandalise. We might turn to genre for comfort: to escape the tedium, uncertainty and injustice of reality; but genre can also confront these horrors, directly or askance, and say something troubling and truthful about them. What projects are you working on? The Charlotte Aitken Trust would like to thank the judges of this year’s award for producing such an outstanding shortlist. It is a showcase for the vitality and range of talent in a younger generation. Tom Benn’s novel Oxblood is a worthy winner, though the prize could have gone to any of the shortlist — which must have made the judges’ task especially hard. We warmly congratulate all four authors and look forward to watching their careers blossom.‘ When Victoria realizes something could be terribly wrong with her brother’s trip though, she gets on a plane and leaves for Italy even though it terrifies her. Once there she realizes how hard it is going to be to find Gil. She also meets a certain someone who ends up showing her a whole new world that she didn’t even know existed while at the same time finally giving her a purpose.

“Oxblood is the Manchester I never knew but could still hear in echo”

More than anything, I was enamoured with Benn's audacity: to tell this raw, violent, compassionate story; to use language in such a thrilling and fresh way; to explore the dark hearts of ordinary people, and to not look away when things get messy; to be, basically, this good' -- D W WILSON Oxblood, Benn’s fourth novel, which was also longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2022, is set in the heart of Manchester’s working-class community in the 1980s, during a period of rising unemployment and declining industry. With a rich atmosphere and vividly drawn characters, Benn spotlights the culture and legacy of patriarchal brutality as it shadows and shapes the lives of three women left behind. In 2013, after all three YA novels in The Lake Trilogy were written and she had let them sit long enough, AnnaLisa took matters into her own hands and self-published the titles within just a few months of each other. Received well by readers young and not-so-young alike, The Lake Trilogy has enjoyed breakout success, selling close to half-million copies the first year. Matriarch Nedra presides over the household, which bustles with activity as she prepares the welcome feast for her grandson Kelly’s return from prison.