My Name is Yip

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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

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