The Young Accomplice

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Wood's natural observational style, combined with his sensibility for the vocabulary and syntax of the time (the prose never feels stilted) make The Young Accomplicea well-wrought novel whose pleasure is in each careful scene, moment and sentence. Goodreads app swallowed my almost finished review today, I’ll have a rest and see if I can muster up the strength to redo it. The truth is revealed sparingly, until we suddenly find ourselves no longer reading a psychological thriller but an action thriller, reminiscent of old British films. He lay back with his throat bared while the barber whipped the soap, and didn't think about the razor.

Premium Digital includes access to our premier business column, Lex, as well as 15 curated newsletters covering key business themes with original, in-depth reporting. This satisfyingly old-fashioned-feeling novel from a youngish author strikingly, sure-footedly conveys its 1950s rural setting, and has a grim pull of foreboding . If, at times, the mechanics of plot carry us away from the more grounded human emotions Wood has cultivated, it is no great matter.You can tell Wood had fun recreating the 1950s setting, and the character dynamics are strong, but ultimately there was no real payoff, such that I wondered what the intended point could have been. However, more seriously, Joyce is still in contact with petty criminal, Mal, whose activities led to her and Charlie ending up in Borstal - and he is now forcing her to continue to do jobs for him.

And critics Johanna Thomas -Corr and Max Liu join Chris to discuss their richly varied recommendations for summer reading. I also didn't particularly enjoy the fairly inconclusive ending, which loops back to Frank Lloyd Wright and his architecture - perhaps this is 'organic architecture' in literary form? You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. What, it asks, are the opportunities available to someone who wants to leap clear of their wrong beginnings?Any changes made can be done at any time and will become effective at the end of the trial period, allowing you to retain full access for 4 weeks, even if you downgrade or cancel. He responds well to the expectations set by the Mayhoods, contributing to the farm labour alongside his architectural training. The title refers to Joyce: in time it becomes clear that she's still up to the sort of mischief that put her into a youth detention centre in the first place, in thrall to an older man whose threats if she doesn't cooperate are all too believable. Agreat read, so beautifully composed that at times I found it hard to believe it was not a forgotten classic by a master such as Graham Greene or Nigel Balchin. Shifts in perspective from one character to the next mean the plot can splinter in many directions, offering alternate outcomes to lives broadly similar .

Instead, she’d had a vision of a dressing table with a nice round mirror and a green felt pad to put her hairbrush on. Set in 1952 the novel explores how Frank Lloyd Wright’s modernist vision inspired a married couple to set up their own architectural office in rural Surrey, where they offer a creative education and opportunity to orphaned siblings fresh out of borstal.It's the summer of 1952 and she and her younger brother Charlie have just been released from borstal. It is a choice that leads to a period in borstal for her and her younger brother, Charlie, developing into a story of opportunity, education and escaping the past. The Young Accomplice is finely constructed, with themes of wrongdoing and innocence woven naturally into the action. The atmosphere of 1950s Britain is well evoked – all Woodbines and pints of mild – and the complicated relationship between the Mayhoods and the Savigears is nicely developed and affecting, with one especially sharp moment when Arthur looks afresh at the troubled Savigears “as though he’d recognised a basic failure in his sums”. It’s only by sustaining his characters so well that Wood can make us miss them when they’re gone, and so The Young Accompliceshows the difference between a book that slides down the surface of things, and one that digs its claws into you and sticks there.

Benjamin Wood's first novel, The Bellwether Revivals, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Book Prize, and won Le Prix du Roman Fnac. Set mainly over the second half of 1952, but with brief forays into the years before and after, the narrative follows the siblings after they are released from borstal and taken on as architectural apprentices by Florence and Arthur Mayhood. Though the momentum is sometimes interrupted by passages describing characters’ pasts, the reading experience is nonetheless enjoyable. For the most part, quite believable too and Wood shows a good understanding of human nature and the circumstances that can shape it. Perhaps it’s because his fiction has a maturity and restraint that feels a little old-fashioned compared with his brasher contemporaries.The siblings have just been released from borstal to start a new life as apprentices at Leventree, an architecture practice with a difference. Like people in Thomas Hardy, hischaracters surge from the page, and the mystery unfolds with asureness seldom seen in contemporary British fiction. About halfway through Benjamin Wood’s fourth novel, The Young Accomplice, a character laments not having designed her bedroom to better suit her needs. Still, this really is a great read, so beautifully composed that at times I found it hard to believe it was not a forgotten classic by a master such as Graham Greene or Nigel Balchin. Polishing the counters so her face reflected in the brass and sweeping floors at closing time until the boss said she could leave.