My Name is Yip: Shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize

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This is violent, anarchic American history with echoes of Sebastian Barry's Days Without End , but Paddy Crewe's take is startlingly original. Occasionally, the folksy tone veers into self-parody (“These is strange flames, said she, these is strange flames”), and a couple of opportunities to explore the big moral issues of the day – slavery and the treatment of Native Americans – are missed. There are pleasures (and horrors too) in this picaresque of a plot, but its real power lies in Yip's distinctive voice.

The characters were well-developed, and descriptions of places made you feel like you could see them.My big criticism of the book is the way it went down the travelling show route with Yip being a mute - I feel it's been done to death and it was a little too obvious. So much of this reminded me of a classic piece of literature, through the language and especially with ties to Dickensian characters - Oliver Twist and Fagin/ Pip in GE. Mostly for me, it reads like some of the old Western mountain men and trapper books that I used to love, but Yip has a tone and spirit of his own. This book tells a story which is both moving and filled with some really emotional moments, and punctuated with a sprinkling of humour, which lighten some of the tougher moments. I’m a huge lover of historical fiction and the Midwest has to be one of my fave time periods so I enjoyed being thrown back into it.

In fact, I can be really patient in that regard, but with this book, nothing really of note happens till about page 84, so I thought, "Ok, now things will pick up," but when they didn't really with another 40 pages of reading, it's time to move on.Plus it leads to the separation of Yip and Dud which for any reader I'm sure, is the highlight of the book!

Crewe has created a memorable hero - one who cannot speak, but in nonetheless an eloquent voice on the page. This novel has such a fantastic voice, Yip Tolroy quickly cemented himself as one of my favorite characters to grace the world of literature.Daniel Wiles, author of Mercia's Take * Unforgettable: rich with imagery, distinctive and convincing * The Times 'Best Books To Read This Summer' * Crewe has created a memorable hero - one who cannot speak, but in nonetheless an eloquent voice on the page. I found it reminiscent of Sebastian Barry' s excellent A Thousand Moons, with its distinctive narrative style and eccentric main characters from outside the social norms.