The Good Son makes another Best of 2015 list – this time from author and book blogger Lindsay Bamfield. Thanks Lindsay.
That makes 2015 quite a year from my debut novel which was…
Here’s what Lindsay said: “I’d read about Paul’s debut novel on his blog as well as number of terrific reviews. I was attending the No The Booker event at Big Green Bookshop, so intended to buy a copy. After hearing Paul read an extract I was well and truly hooked. An original and authentic voice that took me there, to Belfast in the 80s, spending a troubled summer with Mickey – wanting him so very much to achieve what he hoped for.”
If you fancy a copy then about the only place with any first print editions left is Waterstones online. Alternatively, you can buy the e-reader edition at Salt. The new print will be available mid-March.
Thanks everyone and hope your new year is going well.
Book blogger, reviewer, author and founder of The Green Carnation Prize, Simon Savidge, gives a wonderful review of The Good Son on his blog.
“The Good Son is such a brilliant book… unflinching rawness… something I have not experienced before and I thought it was marvellous. It also gives us hope.
McVeigh does many wonderful things with The Good Son and first and foremost of these is the character that he has created with Mickey. McVeigh excels in the use of light and shade within his writing… incredibly powerful… Whilst many novels of the Troubles would make them the main focus and give you them in all their rawest and most shocking detail, I think McVeigh gives you something far more clever and intricate… no word is wasted, no sentence unplanned… ”
You can read he whole interview by clipping the link at the top. You can also listen to my interview with Simon in his podcast ‘You Wrote The Book‘.
Canadian author Lauren B Davis choses ‘The Good Son’ as one of her 10 Best of 2015. I’m in very good company too- EL Doctorow, John Williams, Anthony Doerr… ! Thanks Lauren. Here’s a snippet.
“This book is astonishing. It’s hard to believe this is a first novel, it’s so good. A masterful combination of tragedy and humor, stirred into a batter of scathing social commentary. Paul McVeigh is a writer we’ll be hearing a great deal from in years to come.”
You can read the rest here.
Another wonderful review of The Good Son, this time from Susie Wild in Bare Fiction Magazine. Read the whole thing by clicking the link.
‘A vivid, playful, fence-hurdling, page-turning act of cocky bravado and endearing imagination. Mickey is a shining star of a protagonist; charming, erudite, and warmly, infectiously funny.
…a startling debut, McVeigh proves he more than warrants the literary company he keeps. The writing is sharp and the voice, a difficult one to sustain over a novel’s length, rarely falters. With pages so full of heart and helter-skelter movement, it is no surprise to learn that he also has a background in theatre. The pages of his first novel are alive with sparky dialogue and this visual language, the brash and the subtle, the compelling, the compassionate.
An engaging storyteller, I hope to see more from Paul McVeigh…’
You can hear me read from The Good Son Thursday Dec 3 at Waterstones Piccadilly at 6.30. For tickets to the Word Factory salon at the Waterstones Xmas evening email piccadilly@waterstones.com .
You can listen back to the wonderful review of The Good Son on BBC Radio Ulster by Mike Philpott on the Kerry McLean Show at 42.15 mins in.
“Heart-rending… It has everything… the casual brutality of the Troubles seems worse because it’s seen through this child’s eyes. It’s so real, one the best protagonists I’ve read in a long, long time… The last time a character had stayed with me like that was Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye.
One of McVeigh’s talents is he takes you from sadness to humour to horror to a whole range of other emotions quite often even in the space of one page which is not an easy thing to do.”
Listeners:
“A bitter-sweet experience… One I’d reccomend to all.”
“Amazing, disturbing, sad and funny.”
“It’s the story of every child. I really enjoyed it but it did make me cry.”
“A cracking read. One I’d definitely recommend.”
Amazing! Thanks everyone.
There I was minding my own business when author Nuala O’Connor (her new novel Miss Emily getting wonderful reviews here and in the US) dropped a note to say that she’d seen a wonderful review of The Good Son in Books Ireland. She took some pics of it and emailed it to me. It is a rather fantastic review and made me very happy. Nuala mentioned she has missed reviews in the past and this was the second time that week I’d been sent a review I’d missed (the other being Novel of the Week in The Tablet).
Here’s a quote from this stunning review and you can read the whole thing on these pics from Nuala.
‘The Good Son’ is a hard-hitting, at times harrowing, but ultimately captivating and transformative tale – a story that will leave an indelible imprint on its reader.’ Books Ireland
What a fantatsic review.
“The Good Son” is a startlingly unique coming of age tale which makes the Troubles come alive through the eyes of a boy who has known nothing else, but dreams of better things beyond it.”
A lovely review of my book – but check out the story of the reviewer who while reading the book at a tube station had it snatched out of his hand by a drag queen and the help c/o a Good Samaritan from Navan. You couldn’t make it up!
Paul McVeigh 