My Name is Yip

Author Paddy Crewe
Narrator Sean Bridgers
Publisher Transworld
Publish Date 5 May 2022
Run Time 11 hours and 10 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Adventure fiction: Westerns, Historical adventure fiction, Historical fiction, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Sense of place.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

The year is 1815. One October night in the small town of Heron's Creek, Georgia, Yip Tolroy is born, the cord snaked around his fragile neck, his skin a deathly white. As his mother still lies in the blood-slicked sheets, and Yip takes his first gulps of air, his father disappears without trace. By the time Yip reaches his fifteenth year he has not spoken a word - he is mute, friendless, an outcast. But his life is about to change irrevocably.

Gold is discovered nearby, and Yip commits a grievous crime that leaves him with no choice but to flee. In the company of a new and unlikely comrade, Dud Carter, Yip must take to the road, embarking on a journey that will thrust him unwittingly into a world of menace and violence, of lust and revenge. 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...

'Singular and singing...Paddy Crewe has a 24-carat gift' Sebastian Barry

© Paddy Crewe 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

This is violent, anarchic American history with echoes of Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End, but Paddy Crewe’s take is startlingly original… Yip’s tale is immersive and beautiful in unexpected places. On the strength of this sensational debut, you will be hearing a lot more about Paddy Crewe.

The Times, Historical Fiction Book of the Month

Paddy Crewe’s ambitious, cinematic debut novel set during Georgia’s gold rush in a semi-mythic American south that recalls both Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses and Faulkner’s Light in August… A rollicking, page-turning wild west adventure, populated by a cast of arresting grotesques, with luminous imagery and an unforgettable protagonist… A remarkably vivid and energetic debut novel; a consummate linguistic performance.

Guardian

Recalls the first-person conjuration of Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang and the brutality and lyricism of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses… A thrilling bildungsroman adventure, full of reversals of fortune and getaways.

New Statesman

Bold and impressive… This is a book with a distinct rhythm. The timbre of Yip’s voice and the constant movement of characters through desolate landscapes creates an energy that seduces the reader. Crewe is an author of huge imaginative range.

Literary Review

My Name is Yip is so utterly itself and vivid. I haven’t read anything quite like it. A mesmeric and rollicking adventure told by a narrator like no other – one who beguiles, moves, delights and also had me so worried for him, I was on the edge of my seat. Bold, thrilling, beautifully conceived and deeply atmospheric. I can’t recommend it enough. Superb to the last full stop.

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. Murder, gold, lost fathers… Paddy Crewe has a 24-carat gift

Sebastian Barry, author of Days Without End

Magnificent. My Name is Yip is a sheer joy. What a voice, what a story. Yip is an incredible character, up there with Owen Meany and Holden Caulfield for sheer unforgettableness. It’s a glorious novel.

Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers

Yip Tolroy may not speak, but his voice soars off the page in Paddy Crewe’s terrific debut novel. 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.

Paul Howarth, author of Only Killers and Thieves

I love the compelling narrator, somehow a cross between Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield and Charles Portis’s Mattie Ross. And like True Grit, Yip takes us on a wild ride.

Michael Punke, author of The Revenant and Ridgeline

My Name is Yip accelerates into a wild gallop. There are pleasures (and horrors too) in this picaresque of a plot, but its real power lies in Yip’s distinctive voice. From his first words he springs from the page, entirely himself and impossible to resist. An exuberant and original debut.

Clare Clark, author of Savage Lands

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