My Name is Yip: Shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize

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Cast as nothing more than a ‘simpleton’, Yip begins his narrative reflecting on his adventurous life in The American Midwest, by scribing on his chalk slate with his three remaining fingers. Yip's story is not a happy one, it's one of suffering, pain and injustice, despite this, I couldn't pull myself away. The images still flowing through my mind as if it were a movie I'd just finished watching, i felt every bit invested in the journey of Yip Tolroy that when it came to an end i really felt it, I'm sad there's no more pages to turn. I do think some of the stylistic choices were unnecessary and will likely deter some readers at the very beginning (as it almost did with me) - for example the use of the ampersand in replacement for the word 'and' throughout the whole book, the strange use of capital letters at the beginning of some words. Yip survived but he was mute, not a sound left his mouth from the day he was born, he was also extremely tiny in stature, and didn’t have a single hair on his body.

Both an entertaining tale of gold, murder and the impulse for revenge, and a tender coming-of-age story amid the lawlessness of the American frontier. And, as Yip and Dud’s odyssey takes them further into the unknown – via travelling shows, escaped slaves and the greed of gold-hungry men – the pull of home only gets stronger. However, the multitude of events and characters painted a colourful and brutal picture of the American Midwest.The representation of charming travelling circus manager, Jim Coyne, draws sneakily from Fagan, the supposed protector of Oliver Twist.

My Name Is Yip is a tremendous novel, one that both harks back and burns the way forward, that is built of sentences that sing and roar. 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. Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry * Mute but eloquent, Yip comes thrillingly into our midst to unfurl his singular and singing book of revelations.Abandoned by his father at birth and brought up by his forceful if loving mother, Yip grows up to be hairless, severely stunted in growth and without the ability to speak. An uneventful life, until gold is discovered nearby and Yip is caught up in a bloody, grievous crime forcing him to flee. The bar is high when it comes to coming of age westerns, and despite a different and appealing protagonist narrator, 14 year old Yip, this falls way short.