Oxblood: Winner of the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award

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I loved the character of Jan, the rebellious teenager who has just had her first child at fifteen/sixteen, a mixed-race baby she cannot bear to look at. Her affairs with her teacher and any young man who will look at her are both delightful and tough to read; Jan weaponises her femininity to get what she wants and also to find some comfort as her only bargaining chip in society, but she is also victimised and targeted and exploited by men. Her English teacher is written brilliantly, so skin-crawlingly disturbing and yet as distant as Jan sees him. Jan's grandmother's narrative, and her crumbling importance in the eyes of the community, was instantly recognisable and relatable; Benn wrote these women at the extremes of age and sexuality with realism. And then there is the chemistry between Vic and Ian. It's obvious and instantaneous, but enjoyable non-the-less. A blistering portrait of a family on fire, Oxblood lays bare the horror of violence, the exile of grief, and the extraordinary power of love. 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. Oxblood shows us that there are few places literature can't take us, if the writer is brave enough, and gifted enough' -- FRANCIS SPUFFORD

Set in a council house haunted by memories of dead family members, Benn’s unflinching storytelling unearths the forgotten working class voices left in the footnotes of Manchester’s industrial history, shrouded by criminal secrecy and steeped in a powerful emotional darkness which left this year’s judges’ ‘bowled over’ and certain that Tom Benn’s talent will only continue to ‘grow and grow’. The involvement of Franzen gives this entertaining translation of Brussig’s charming East German novel plenty of star quality. But you can see why the American was so keen to bring this superb slice of life behind the Berlin Wall to a wider audience. Written in 1999, each chapter from the point of view of teenager Michael, it is a pitch-perfect takedown of the totalitarian experience. A reminder that no matter the harshness of a situation, a community can still live with hope and humour. Oxblood From the new M John Harrison, Wish I Was Here, his aphoristic “anti-memoir”: “Work into a genre if you like, but from as far outside it as possible.” Or this from Susan Sontag’s diaries: “Madness as a defense against terror. Madness as a defense against grief.” For me, writing is always the madness and the response to the madness. Who do you admire the most? One good thing about judging a prize like this is that you approach a book without context or preconception and get to just plunge in. And Oxblood is a book to get lost headlong in. Tom Benn manages to be heart-felt and attentive and generous, without ever resorting to being sentimental. In fact this is a book of anti-sentimental greatness, wonderfully written, deft and pungent and sensuous. It is brave too, telling a tale without fear of ugliness, without seeking to smooth over the bumps of lived life at all. It is honest and truthful, but also a great feat of fiction. And he writes amazing female characters as well. It felt right to give him the prize not just as a reward for this massive achievement, but as a nod towards the novels he’s going to write in the future, which we have a feeling will be great.‘ With that said, I enjoyed the story overall. I think it had a good amount of suspense and a few twists that I didn’t see coming, which was fun. Victoria is such a cool character, with her ability to adapt to situations, and I like that her skill in observation came in handy in her search for her brother. I hope that she grows more as the series continues and is able to get past the aren’t-I-such-a-sad-baby thing, because while she certainly has it tough, she also certainly loves lamenting over the fact that her life is tough. This one wasn’t a must-read for me, but I definitely can see people loving it for its constant stream of surprises.

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

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. She's really worried, so off to Italy she flies. Starting with the last hotel that he stayed in, she starts asking questions. To her surprise, she's greeted by a good looking man .. pointing a gun at her. Seems like he's looking for her brother, as well. To witness the mid-meal apocalypse: James Ellroy, Ishmael Reed, Zora Neale Hurston, Blaise Cendrars, Begum Rokeya, Marco Vassi, Alan Moore and Anna Kavan. The best and worst things about where you live?

Over the course of a few days, the Dodds women must each confront the true legacy of the men who have defined their lives; and seize the opportunity to break the cycle for good. We are thrilled that Tom Benn has won this year’s Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award. Oxblood is fiction at its most urgent and affecting, and readers will be hugely grateful to discover it as a result of this well-deserved accolade. The award carries terrific prestige and Waterstones are proud to partner with the Sunday Times to reach as many new readers as possible.‘ 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.‘ Oxblood is one of those rare books where place and time are conjured so effortlessly, the caste of characters are drawn with so much ease and grace… Tom Benn is a seriously gifted writer and I’m keen to read whatever he does next.‘a book to get lost headlong in. Tom Benn manages to be heart-felt and attentive and generous, without ever resorting to being sentimental..Wonderfully written, deft and pungent and sensuous. It is honest and truthful, but also a great feat of fiction -- STIG ABELL Much of the story involved suspenseful activities, like people trying to kill or capture Vic. Despite not being a trained spy, Vic made use of the skills she did have to survive and even saved others. Once she got to Italy, I had a hard time putting the book down because I wanted to know what happened next (and the book had been enjoyable before that). Congratulations, Tom, on winning the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. What does it mean to you? Francis Spufford: ‘I’ve always loved novels best as a reader, but for a long time I was too timid to take the plunge’ ] Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?

Tom Benn certainly reveals the very darkest side of working class life on the estate but does so with writing that is engaging and beautiful, even when describing the depths to which humanity can sink. Wythenshawe, South Manchester. 1985. The Dodds family once ruled Manchester's underworld; now the men are dead, leaving three generations of women trapped in a house haunted by violence, harbouring an unregistered baby and the ghost of a murdered lover. It was a close call, because we were having to decide between four wonderful and wildly different books – but in the end, to me, it was Tom Benn who was doing the boldest and richest thing, using an unflinching sympathy and a fascinatingly mutated version of the crime writer’s tool-kit to carry the reader into the intimate depths of a household of violence. It’s a disconcerting book, with its insistence that a family’s heart of darkness is still despite it all a heart, and I wouldn’t call it reassuring, yet it shows us that there are few places literature can’t take us, if the writer is brave enough, and gifted enough.‘ Matriarch Nedra presides over the household, which bustles with activity as she prepares the welcome feast for her grandson Kelly's return from prison. Oxbloodshows us that there are few places literature can't take us, if the writer is brave enough, and gifted enough' FRANCIS SPUFFORDVic has the natural observational powers of a long-time spy, and this skill makes her an asset to the team. Her abilities remind me of a cross between Cassie from The Naturals series and Veronica Mars. So of course, I enjoyed watching her notice everything. 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. 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. 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. Victoria was a fun character. She might not have been what you expect of a 20 year old but she did have the I'm invincible down. I'm not sure why teens think they are invincible but many of them do.

What a voice Tom Benn has got, what a feel for character and place, and what an uncompromising approach he has to his subject and material. He’s gritty but totally empathetic, and inhabits his milieu of 1980s Manchester with total conviction and no attempt to soften the voices of his characters We were bowled over as a judging panel by Oxblood, and feel confident too that Tom is a talent who will grow and grow.‘ Victoria is a young woman who is working at a diner and has no real idea what she wants to do with her life. So instead she uses her brother going to law school as a reason for not going to school and furthering her education. While her brother is away in Italy for school, her and her best friend have end up living together with the occasional stop in from her Vic’s freeloading boyfriend. I loved Vic’s best friend and how she helped her not be so uptight about thing sometimes. We all need a person like that in our lives. As for the freeloading boyfriend he needs to go, and I was so happy when Vic finally stood up to him. 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? From Mary Gaitskill’s courageously nuanced personal essay, The Trouble with Following the Rules: “The truth may hurt, but in art, anyway, it also helps, sometimes profoundly.” A book to make me laugh?Much of my poetry has been inspired or provoked by the blues’ ] Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage? Matriarch Nedra presides over the household, which bustles with activity as she prepares the welcome feast for her grandson Kelly’s return from prison. Cheers. It couldn’t be more surreal and encouraging to win an award that has championed so many writers whose work means something to me. Tell us about your latest novel, Oxblood. It took eight years to write?