- Music
- 01 Oct 15
Beatlebone isn't out yet but it's already making literary waves
The omens for Kevin Barry’s Beatlebone are looking extremely good, with it shortlisted alongside Max Porter’s Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, Magnus Mills’ The Field Of The Cloth Of Gold, Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island, Adam Thirlwell’s Lurid & Cute and Richard Beard’s Acts Of The Assassins for the Goldsmiths Prize 2015.
The Limerick man’s second full-length offering is summed up by judge Eimear McBride thus: “John Lennon wants to visit his island off the west coast of Ireland but events conspire against him and, upon this small idea, a universe is built. Stylistically adventurous and utterly inimitable, Beatlebone is a book about the strange and the wonderful, time and place. But at its beating heart is the personal struggle within the struggle for art and by skill, wit and the sheer force of his linguistic will, Barry creates a great work of one himself.”
Adds Prize Chair, Professor Josh Cohen: “The Goldsmiths Prize continues to demonstrate how greatly exaggerated are those hoary old rumours of the novel’s impending death. Having enjoyed a long and robust discussion of the different ways today’s novelists are challenging, breaking and remaking the rules of their own form, we’re delighted to present this shortlist of audacious and original books. If there’s a red thread running through these fascinatingly diverse novels, it’s a very contemporary concern with life at its furthest edges. We hope to see the shortlist provoke much curiosity and argument among many readers about the possibilities of fiction today.”
Now in its third year, the prize is run by the titular London university in association with New Statesmen and is worth £10,000 for the winner - plus lots of profile and publicity.
Beatlebone hits shelves on October 29, with Irvine Welsh opining on the cover that Barry is, “The most arresting and original writer to emerge from these islands in years.”