The Young Accomplice
- Brand: Unbranded
Description
Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Benjamin Wood's The Young Accompliceis a treat for those who have followed his career ... Its greatest quality is its understanding of how characters exist only in relation to one another. Each pairing gives us a new angle, and added depth, with the clarity of a diamond. Wood's daring narrative decisions show he hasn't lost the old spark, but has just added to it with his new repertoire. What, it asks, are the opportunities available to someone who wants to leap clear of their wrong beginnings? John Self, The Critic Best Books of the Year 2022 His most original [novel] yet . . . The Young Accomplice has already been compared to Thomas Hardy novels and there are echoes of Tess of the d'Urbervilles in the story of a vulnerable young woman whose past catches up with her. Wood is also wonderful on the intricacies of love and architecture as a means of enriching people's lives. It's a novel that feels as if it has been imagined with slow and tender care - and I suspect it will be cherished by readers for a long time Sunday Times The lives we design versus the lives we live is a central dichotomy in the book, which tells of two siblings, just released from borstal and assigned to take up residence and apprenticeship with a couple in the English countryside. It’s the 1950s and reverberations of the war linger (one character lost an arm on duty), but life must go on. The couple’s project is a Utopian one: they wish to replenish their farmland so it can provide subsistence as they run their architecture practice/apprenticeship. Will the siblings, and the couple, succeed in improving their lives by design, or will their foundations prove too unstable? Magwitch-like criminals
Siblings Joyce and Charlie Savigear are 'rescued' from their Borstal sentences by married architects Arthur and Florence Mayhood, who run their architectural practice from a Surrey farm, which they plan to be self-sufficient - and they also seek a couple of apprentices to work with them, both on the farm and in their architectural practice. The Mayhoods are both keen followers of renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his Taliesin community in Arizona and Arthur, having ended up in Borstal himself when he was a teenager, wishes to give Joyce and Charlie the chance to make something of themselves. Both have been selected following a drawing competition run in conjunction with the various Borstals by Arthur and Florence, where they both showed promise. Enter Joyce and Charlie Savigear – siblings in their late teens – who win the Mayhoods’ drawing competition for borstal kids with an eye for design. While Joyce (the elder of the two) is rather sly and outspoken, Charlie is much quieter – a diligent young man who seems eager to learn. He responds well to the expectations set by the Mayhoods, contributing to the farm labour alongside his architectural training. In truth, there is something of the young Arthur in Charlie Savigear, a gentleness combined with curiosity and determination, qualities that Florence detects and hopes to nurture. Benjamin Wood knows how to generate tension, makes lively characters you can see and hear, and writes about rural England in a sensitive, considered way that doesn't stray into the nostalgic. A huge talent Hilary Mantel A resounding achievement . . . Rich, beautiful and written by an author of great depth and resource Guardian, on The EclipticWood writes with superb attention to detail and authenticity. My only question is why the Mayhoods are shown to have a diesel-powered ‘wagon’ at a time when all but the heaviest goods vehicles would have used petrol engines. This satisfyingly old-fashioned-feeling novel from a youngish author strikingly, sure-footedly conveys its 1950s rural setting, and has a grim pull of foreboding ... Benjamin Wood's perspective-shifting novel weaves elements of thriller, romance and coming-of-age to gripping, memorable effect. Patricia Nicol, Sunday TimesBest Books of 2022 The atmosphere of 1950s Britain is well evoked – all Woodbines and pints of mild – and the complicated relationship between the Mayhoods and the Savigears is nicely developed and affecting, with one especially sharp moment when Arthur looks afresh at the troubled Savigears “as though he’d recognised a basic failure in his sums”. It is a pity, though, that this story of messy human miscalculations should resolve so magically and undeservedly, as it does, in a gilded New York hotel room, in the presence of a saintly Frank Lloyd Wright. His debut The Bellwether Revivals (2012) was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Book Prize, and won France's Prix du Roman Fnac.
Benjamin Wood is building a sublime body of work. This masterful, suspenseful novel is his best yet. It swallows you up. I love it David Whitehouse, author of About A SonBenjamin Wood is building a sublime body of work. This masterful, suspenseful novel is his best yet. It swallows you up. I love it. David Whitehouse, author of About A Son A many-layered story of old-fashioned virtue and ambition, anaccount of the practicalities of “a campaign for a better life”. The Young Accomplice isfinely constructed, with themes of wrongdoing and innocence wovennaturally into the action. Its evocation of an ostensibly decorous postwar world full ofcontradictions is convincing throughout. Benjamin Wood’s attention to detail, his smoothwriting style and his strong beliefs give the novel an unusual dignity, in keeping with the eraof its setting. TLS Wood’s natural observational style (Arthur’s realisation, as he looks at a man in the pub, that “every filling in that mouth — and likely everybody else’s in the building — had a faint connection to his wife”, whose father was a dentist, is one example), combined with his sensibility for the vocabulary and syntax of the time (the prose never feels stilted) make The Young Accomplice a well-wrought novel whose pleasure is in each careful scene, moment and sentence. Niamh Donnelly
- Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
- EAN: 764486781913
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