Tag: literary prizes

Reading The Walter Scott Prize 2020 Shortlist: Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor

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Shadowplay AudiobookAbout the Book

1878 – The Lyceum Theatre, London. Three extraordinary people begin their life together, a life that will be full of drama, transformation, passionate and painful devotion to art and to one another. Henry Irving, the Chief, is the volcanic leading man and impresario; Ellen Terry is the most lauded and desired actress of her generation, outspoken and generous of heart; and ever following along behind them in the shadows is the unremarkable theatre manager, Bram Stoker.

Fresh from life in Dublin as a clerk, Bram may seem the least colourful of the trio but he is wrestling with dark demons in a new city, in a new marriage, and with his own literary aspirations. As he walks the London streets at night, streets haunted by the Ripper and the gossip which swirls around his friend Oscar Wilde, he finds new inspiration. But the Chief is determined that nothing will get in the way of his manager?s devotion to the Lyceum and to himself. And both men are enchanted by the beauty and boldness of the elusive Ellen.

This exceptional novel explores the complexities of love that stands dangerously outside social convention, the restlessness of creativity, and the experiences that led to Dracula, the most iconic supernatural tale of all time.

Format: Audiobook (11h 40m)     Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks
Publication date: 6th June 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

Shadowplay is one of the books on the shortlist for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2020. You can find more details about the other books on the shortlist here.

In this fictionalized account of the life of Bram Stoker, the author adopts some of the literary techniques of Stoker’s famous novel, Dracula, including the use of diary entries, letters and transcripts of conversations as well as more traditional third person narration. As Stoker struggles – with limited success – to achieve his literary aspirations, some of the fun is spotting names and places that will later find their way into Dracula.

The core of the novel is the relationship between Bram Stoker and the bombastic Sir Henry Irving. When famed actress, Ellen Terry, arrives on the scene it creates an even more turbulent triangle. Poor Florence, Bram Stoker’s wife, is rather left out in the cold as the Lyceum Theatre becomes central to Stoker’s life. Not to mention attending to the whims of Sir Henry Irving, an equally all-consuming occupation, the main qualification for which seems to be the ability to consume large quantities of alcohol.

I loved the descriptions of the theatrical performances and all the backstage goings on. There is a great episode where Oscar Wilde attends a performance and provokes a very raucous after show party. The author also throws in some supernatural elements and it’s all set against the backdrop of a London stalked by Jack the Ripper.

The last, quite long, section of the book transports the reader ahead a number of years and has a distinctly melancholy tone as age and infirmity catch up with the main characters. I found the end of the book poignant and rather moving.

I listened to the audiobook version, narrated by Anna Chancellor and Barry McGovern. To be fair, the latter does the majority of the narration with Anna Chancellor contributing a couple of sections purporting to be recordings of Ellen Terry’s recollections of Sir Henry Irving. These are wickedly funny and delivered in Anna Chancellor’s inimitable style. Where Ellen Terry appears elsewhere in the book, she is voiced by Barry McGovern rather than by Anna Chancellor, even in chapters told from the point of view of Ellen Terry. However, I can’t fault Barry McGovern’s representation of the rich, plummy tones of Sir Henry Irving or the soft Irish lilt of Bram Stoker.

Shadowplay is inventive, imaginative and full of Gothic atmosphere. I can definitely see why it has earned a place on The Walter Scott Prize shortlist.

In three words: Atmospheric, complex, immersive

Try something similar: The Wardrobe Mistress by Patrick McGrath

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JOC-PhotoAbout the Author

Novelist, screenwriter, playwright and broadcaster, Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin. He is the author of nine novels including Star of the Sea, Ghost Light (Dublin One City One Book novel 2011) and Shadowplay (June 2019). Among his awards are the Prix Zepter for European Novel of the Year, France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, an American Library Association Award and the Irish Pen Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literature. His work has been translated into forty languages.

In 2014 he was appointed Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. Twice-Booker Prize-winner Peter Carey has written, ‘There are few living writers who can take us back in time so assuredly, through such gorgeous sentences. Joseph O’Connor is a wonder, and Shadowplay is a triumph.’ (Photo/bio credit: Author website)

Connect with Joseph
Website

About the Narrator

Barry McGovern is one of Ireland’s most skilled and experienced actors, who has had a long career in theatre, film, television and radio. He is regarded by many as one of the leading exponents of the work of Samuel Beckett. His one-man Beckett show, I’ll Go On, produced by Dublin’s Gate Theatre, has played worldwide.

He has toured with the Gate productions of Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Happy Days. In early 2012 he played Vladimir in the acclaimed production of Waiting for Godot at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles which garnered him a 2012 Ovation Award Lead Actor nomination.

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2020 Shortlist
The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2020 Shortlist

The Dylan Thomas Prize 2020 Shortlist #SUDTP20 @dylanthomprize

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2020 Shortlist Banner (Large)

The shortlist for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2020 was announced  on 7th April and comprises three poetry collections, two novels and one short story collection:

  • Surge – Jay Bernard (Chatto & Windus)
  • Flèche – Mary Jean Chan (Faber & Faber)
  • Inland – Téa Obreht (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
  • If All the World and Love Were Young – Stephen Sexton (Penguin Random House)
  • On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong (Jonathan Cape, Vintage)
  • Lot – Bryan Washington (Atlantic Books)

You can read my review of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong here. Sadly, the other book I read from the longlist, The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay, didn’t make it through.

Dylan Thomas Prize TimetableAbout the Prize

Launched in 2006, The Dylan Thomas Prize is one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes as well as the world’s largest literary prize for young writers. Awarded for the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under, the Prize celebrates the international world of fiction in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama.

Commenting on the six shortlisted titles, the chair of the judges, Swansea University’s Professor Dai Smith CBE said, “The shortlist for 2020 ranges across the genres of poetry, short form fiction and the novel, and each work manages to address upfront the pressing social and personal concerns and dilemmas of our time. But what suddenly stands out in stark relief, amidst the overwhelming global nature of the crisis in which all humanity now finds itself struggling to cope, are the universal values which these disparate books highlight: compassion, empathy, courage against despair, anger against indifference, love in despite of everything. In a very dark time these six supremely talented young writers do what all such writers do: they light the way, and so must be read for all our sakes.”

The Winner of the £30,000 Prize will be announced at 19:00 GMT on Thursday 14th May at a virtual Award Ceremony hosted by Swansea University.

About the Shortlisted Authors

Jay Bernard is the author of the pamphlets Your Sign is Cuckoo, Girl (Tall Lighthouse, 2008), English Breakfast (Math Paper Press, 2013) and The Red and Yellow Nothing (Ink Sweat & Tears Press, 2016), which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2017. A film programmer at BFI Flare and an archivist at Statewatch, they also participated in ‘The Complete Works II’ project in 2014 and in which they were mentored by Kei Miller. Jay was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year in 2005 and a winner of SLAMbassadors UK spoken word championship. In 2019 Jay was selected by Jackie Kay as one of Britain’s ten best BAME writers for the British Council and National Centre for Writing’s International Literature Showcase. Their poems have been collected in Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century (Bloodaxe, 2009), The Salt Book of Younger Poets (Salt, 2011), Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe, 2014) and Out of Bounds: British Black & Asian Poets (Bloodaxe, 2014).

Mary Jean Chan is a London-based poet, lecturer and editor from Hong Kong. Her debut poetry collection, Flèche (Faber & Faber), is the winner of the 2019 Costa Book Award for Poetry. Chan has twice been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem and is the recipient of a 2019 Eric Gregory Award and the 2018 Poetry Society Geoffrey Dearmer Prize. Chan currently lectures in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University.

Téa Obreht is the author of The Tiger’s Wife, winner of the Orange Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award, and Inland. She was born in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia, in 1985 and has lived in the United States since the age of twelve. She currently lives in New York City.

Stephen Sexton lives in Belfast where he teaches at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. His first book, If All the World and Love Were Young, is forthcoming from Penguin.

Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have also been featured in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. In 2019 he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he serves as an Assistant Professor of English at UMass-Amherst. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is his first novel.

Bryan Washington is a National Book Award 5 Under 35 honouree and the author of the collection, Lot, and the forthcoming novel, Memorial. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, BuzzFeed, Vulture, The Paris Review, Tin House, One Story, Bon Appétit, GQ, The Awl, and Catapult. He lives in Houston.

Dylan Thomas Prize 2020 Shortlist AuthorsTop, from left: Jay Bernard, Mary Jean Chan, Téa Obreht Bottom, from left: Stephen Sexton, Ocean Vuong and Bryan Washington

Have you read any of the shortlisted books? Which book do you think will win?