| Tom Rob Smith | for Child 44 | Simon & Schuster |
| Jennie Rooney | for Inside the Whale | Vintage |
| Nancy Horan | for Loving Frank | Sceptre |
| Farahad Zama | for The Marriage Bureau For Rich People | Abacus |
| Hillary Jordan | for Mudbound | Windmill |
| Melissa Benn | for One of Us | Vintage |
By the time Tom Rob Smith’s debut was being sold in to bookshops, his publishers could already boast of a film deal with Ridley Scott. The short chapters of Jennie Rooney’s debut – one of my favourite books of the year – were apparently defined by how much she could write in her lunchbreaks in her former job as a lawyer, but the resulting structure proved quite inspired.
It was growing up as part of a British political dynasty which provided Melissa Benn with the insight to expose the subterfuges and hidden agendas of Parliament.The pitfalls of romance – in any culture – made Farahad Zama’s tale of an Indian marriage bureau smething with which we can all identify.
Hilary Jordan was the first beneficiary of the New Writers’ Book Club which heralded Richard and Judy’s switch to Watch. Her tale of the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta satisfied the desire of Britons to learn something as they read, also true of Nancy Horan’s bringing to life of a little-known skeleton in the closet of architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
It will probably do better as a film because, as a book, it was a poor effort, first or not.
Great to see new writers in the spotlight, but I see there are no indie pubishers’ title included here. I’d love to see atuhors like Catherine O’Flynn, Sebastian Beaumont, Tan Twan Eng or Gaynor Taylor up for this, as it would show people that there’s more to fiction than what every bookshop is pushing at the front of the shop.