Really excited that The Good Son has been chosen as one of Gransnet’s Christmas Books for 2015. It’s a honour to be listed alongside so many excellent authors like Sebastian Faulks and Patrick Gale, who said of The Good Son – “Pungently funny, shot through with streaks of aching sadness”.
Have a look through their picks here.
‘Heart gripping!’
The Good Son has been chosen for this month’s Book Club on the Kerry McLean Show on Radio Ulster. Skip to 52 minutes in to hear Esther Haller-Clarke review the book and it will be reviewed again later this month.
A profile about me in The Belfast Telegraph. From my home town, it’s also Northern Ireland’s best-selling newspaper and I’m profiled here by local legend Ivan Little. A few errors in there – I went to the University of Ulster at Coleraine for example… I can’t blame Ivan as we talked for hours and I was caffeine fuelled.
I hope you like it.
Do you like going to live events? Watching and listening to authors read their work? I’m staying in my home town of Brighton tonight for Polari, hosted by the rather fab Paul Burston. I’ll be reading alongside VG Lee, Fergus Evans, Juliet Jacques and Damian Barr. Come along to The Marlborough Theatre at 7.30pm. You can get your tickets here.
My most unusual reading at the Wroclaw International Short Story Festival this month.
Tomorrow I’m off to Bath to teach my ‘Killer First Page’ class (sold out I’m afraid but tickets available for London). In the evening I’m reading with Tania Hershman and Sarah Hilary at St James Wine Vaults at 7.30pm.
Back in Brighton again on Wed 21st as part of the City Reads celebration of Matt Haig’s ‘The Humans’. A wealth of writing talent will respond to this work in their own way. Check out the list below.
On my birthday, October 27th, I’ll be reading in Hastings at my second Polari event of the month alongside Adam Mars-Jones, Chris Green, Diane Perry and Erica Smith. The event starts at 7.30pm at The Print works, 14 Claremont, America Ground.
Hope to see some of you there. Say hello.
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| This Year’s Prize |
Hello lovely people. Judgement is upon me. It appears it is time when you can vote for your choice to win The Guardian‘s Not Booker Prize from the shortlist. Would be appreciated muchly if you had the time to vote for The Good Son.
Click this link and…
“Voting is simple. All you have to do is nominate your favourite book in the comments below this article. Please make it easy for us by writing the word “vote” and then specifying the name of the book you’re going for and the author at the start of your comment. We just want one vote from you, for one book. We’d also like to see 50 words or so explaining your choice. As ever, please don’t worry if you’ve changed your mind during the course of the competition.”
You could use the same review you gave last time, if you voted – its probably still on their site.
Many thanks… and wish me luck.
Last week the writer Avalina Kreska wrote a fantastic short, review of The Good Son on her blog. She said – ahem – ‘A masterpiece – a must-read – beautiful – stirring – surely there will be a film…’
Of course I was overjoyed. But then came this…
Avalina Kreska’s Incredible Comic Strip
I was completely blown away. Its so funny, original, quirky and imaginative… I’ve never seen a response to a book like this. And I’m much better looking in this so pretty chuffed.
If you like it and fancy contacting Avalina about her work with comics you can do so here. I’m going to get mine printed and framed.
Thanks Avalina!
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.
In this touching article for the Huffington Post, Polari Prize-winning author Diriye Osman talks about his fear of reading his work live. He praises Word Factory, where I’m the Associate Director. Have you ever been? It’s a monthly short story salon in Waterstones Piccadilly. If you love short stories or just great writing you should come along. Over the last 3 years we’ve had AS Byatt, Hanif Kureishi, Michael Morporgo, Lionel Shriver… to name but a few. You can have a look at the upcoming salon’s here and there’s also a treasure trove of videos of past salons.
You can see Diriye read from his groundbreaking short stories at Word Factory this month, Sept 19.
Oh, and Diriye also praised my debut novel The Good Son, calling it ‘a revelatory and stunning coming-of-age story set during the Troubles in Ireland’. Nice!
You can read the full article here.
He looks amazing!
“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 