I recognised a lot of this description of the ‘80s while, at the same time, the life described in it is very different from what my own was at the time. This is the tale of three women of different generations in the same family, the youngest being roughly contemporaneous with me. Teenage girls, even more than now, were seen as appropriate sex objects then. You either had to veer away from it (as I did, hiding myself in oversized men’s suits and scary goth makeup) or lean into it, as love-starved Jan does here. Oxblood, Benn’s fourth novel, which was also longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2022, is set in the heart of Manchester’s working-class community in the 1980s, during a period of rising unemployment and declining industry. With a rich atmosphere and vividly drawn characters, Benn spotlights the culture and legacy of patriarchal brutality as it shadows and shapes the lives of three women left behind. For over 30 years, the UK’s most influential prize for young writers has been a definitive indicator of rising literary talent in Britain and Ireland, and Tom Benn joins an illustrious list of previous winners, including last year’s winner Cal Flyn, as well as Zadie Smith, Simon Armitage, Max Porter, Sally Rooney and Robert Macfarlane. My one slight criticism is that the setup (whilst important to give context to the characters) phase of the book laboured the point a little. Without giving anything away, I'll just say I pushed myself through the first half of the book a little bit, but read the second half more or less in one sitting. Oxblood is one of those rare books where place and time are conjured so effortlessly, the caste of characters are drawn with so much ease and grace… Tom Benn is a seriously gifted writer and I’m keen to read whatever he does next.‘

Rendered with such care and specificity that it feels wholly original...a rich, dark, atmospheric family saga that contains so much buried love and anger and grief and sexual jealousy and bitter disappointment. I emerged from it exhilarated' -- JOHANNA THOMAS-CORR Prose like poetry...I really felt like I needed to savour each sentence. An utterly unique voice, telling a working-class story that resists the usual clichés' -- OTEGHA UWAGBA

“Oxblood is the Manchester I never knew but could still hear in echo”

We are thrilled that Tom Benn has won this year’s Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award. Oxblood is fiction at its most urgent and affecting, and readers will be hugely grateful to discover it as a result of this well-deserved accolade. The award carries terrific prestige and Waterstones are proud to partner with the Sunday Times to reach as many new readers as possible.‘

Victoria ‘Vic’ Asher is a clever, young teen living in a way too small and mundane world. Her life is pretty ordinary, until one day some remarkable occurrences change her life.If I read a better novel than Oxblood in 2022, it'll be a blinding year for fiction. Tom Benn, please take a bow. Everybody else, please take note' -- JOSEPH KNOX The judges chose Tom Benn from a compelling shortlist of four authors, each producing innovative, forward-thinking narratives that pushed the boundaries of language and form, with Johanna Thomas-Corr commenting that each shortlisted writer had ‘set themselves free of publishing conventions’. In Larger than an Orange, Lucy Burns draws together an intimate memoir exploring the personal and public experience of abortion, in Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, Maddie Mortimer poetically examines disease and mortality, and Katherine Rundell interrogates John Donne’s meditations on corporeal existence in the animated biography of his work, Super-Infinite (the only non-fiction title on the list). Wythenshawe, South Manchester. 1985. The Dodds family once ruled Manchester's underworld; now the men are dead, leaving three generations of women trapped in a house haunted by violence, harbouring an unregistered baby and the ghost of a murdered lover. A blistering portrait of a family on fire, Oxblood lays bare the horror of violence, the exile of grief, and the extraordinary power of love.

Over the course of a few days, Nedra, Carol and Jan must each confront the true legacy of the men who have defined their lives; and seize the opportunity to break the cycle for good.She's really worried, so off to Italy she flies. Starting with the last hotel that he stayed in, she starts asking questions. To her surprise, she's greeted by a good looking man .. pointing a gun at her. Seems like he's looking for her brother, as well. Victoria was a fun character. She might not have been what you expect of a 20 year old but she did have the I'm invincible down. I'm not sure why teens think they are invincible but many of them do. With that said, I enjoyed the story overall. I think it had a good amount of suspense and a few twists that I didn’t see coming, which was fun. Victoria is such a cool character, with her ability to adapt to situations, and I like that her skill in observation came in handy in her search for her brother. I hope that she grows more as the series continues and is able to get past the aren’t-I-such-a-sad-baby thing, because while she certainly has it tough, she also certainly loves lamenting over the fact that her life is tough. This one wasn’t a must-read for me, but I definitely can see people loving it for its constant stream of surprises. Congratulations, Tom, on winning the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. What does it mean to you? Tom Benn writes well about women and their lives, the changing attitudes towards them and their expectations of life from the ‘60s to the ‘80s, and by implication, the contrast with the present day. All his characters are nuanced and he evokes some sympathy for even the worst behaved of them.