Emma Healey, Carys Bray and Claire Fuller on Desmond Elliott Prize shortlist

The Desmond Elliott Prize 2015, one of the most prestigious awards for first-time novelists, announced its shortlist today – Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey (Viking), A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray (Hutchinson) and Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller (Fig Tree) – from a longlist of 10 books published in the last year by British and Irish debut novelists.

The shortlisted writers reflect the variety of paths that can lead to authorship. Louise Doughty, chair of the judges, noted: “It’s fascinating to see that each writer arrived here from slightly unorthodox beginnings and it’s a testament to The Desmond Elliott Prize that it identifies and rewards the very best new writing talent, whatever the author’s date of birth. Our shortlist shows that there’s no age limit on being a sparkling new arrival on the literary scene.”

Doughty added: “Contrary to the popular myth of gilded youth producing all our great works, literary history is strewn with late starters: William Golding published his first novel at the age of 44 and went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.”

Claire Fuller, 48, originally studied sculpture at Winchester School of Art, specialising in wood and stone carving, then ran her own marketing company for 23 years. She began writing fiction in her 40s, spurred on by National Novel Writing Month (or “NaNoWriMo”), an online phenomenon which challenges participants to write a novel in a month. Doughty said: “Our Endless Numbered Days is a brilliantly constructed tale of a survivalist father kidnapping his own daughter to live in a Bavarian forest, told through the eyes of an utterly convincing teenage narrator.”

Londoner Emma Healey, the youngest of the shortlisted authors at 29, took home a C in GCSE English in her school days, but, like Fuller, brings an artistic background to her writing – her first degree was in bookbinding, after which she worked in an art gallery. She eventually enrolled in the UEA Creative Writing Course before Elizabeth is Missing went on to sell at auction and become a bestseller. Doughty commented that the novel “has been rightly acclaimed for its deft interweaving of two time frames as an elderly woman living with Alzheimer’s sets out to solve a mystery from her past”.

Carys Bray, 39, has spoken openly about the restrictions that kept her from writing until recently. Just five years ago she and her husband decided to remove their family of six from the Mormon faith. She now also teaches Creative Writing and is completing a PhD. Doughty called A Song for Issy Bradley “a heart-breaking and tremendously funny account of a family negotiating a personal tragedy in a devout Mormon community”.

Doughty said of the judging process: “Our deliberations were long and heartfelt but we’ve come up with a shortlist of three fantastic books of which we are immensely proud. The books we eventually chose are all remarkably fully achieved first novels – we would defy any reader to guess they were debuts.Each book has a compulsive narrative, characters you really care about and language that sings off the page – it’s the combination of all three skills that shows these are all novelists with great futures ahead of them.”

The prize is presented in the name of the late publisher and literary agent Desmond Elliott, who grew up in an Irish orphanage. In 1947, aged 16 and with just two pounds in his pocket, he left for England to start his publishing career at Macmillan. He set up as an agent and establish ed his own publishing company, Arlington Books, in 1960. The charismatic, witty and waspish Elliott – who drank only champagne, flew regularly by Concorde and used Fortnum & Mason as his local grocer – nurtured numerous blockbuster authors, including Jilly Cooper, Anthony Horowitz and Penny Vincenzi. He died in August 2003 at the age of 73. He stipulated that his estate should be invested in a charitable trust that would fund a literary award “to enrich the careers of new writers.”

Now in its eighth year, the award has an established record for spotting up-and-coming novelists and propelling them to greater recognition and success. Last year’s winner was Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. Other past winners include Grace McCleen, Anjali Joseph, Edward Hogan and Ali Shaw.

Doughty’s fellow judges are bookseller Jonathan Ruppin and journalist and author Viv Groskop. The winner will be revealed at a ceremony at Fortnum & Mason on July 1st, where she will be presented with a cheque for £10,000.

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey (Viking)

‘Elizabeth is missing’, reads the note in Maud’s pocket in her own handwriting.

Lately, Maud’s been getting forgetful. She keeps buying peach slices when she has a cupboard full of them, forgets to drink the cups of tea she’s made and writes notes to remind herself of things. But Maud is determined to discover what has happened to her friend, Elizabeth, and what it has to do with the unsolved disappearance of her sister Sukey, years back, just after the war.

Praise from The Desmond Elliott Prize

“[A] mystery as gripping psychologically as it is emotionally. The topic of dementia is a brave one for a young writer who should be at the antipodes of such experience but she handles it most assuredly, invests every one of her characters with individual eloquence.”

About the author

Emma Healey wrote her first short story when she was four, told her teachers she was going to be a writer when she was eight, but had learnt better by 12 and had decided on being a litigator (inspired entirely by the film Clueless). It took another ten years before she came back to writing. She grew up in London where she went to art college and completed her first degree in bookbinding. She then worked for two libraries, two bookshops, two art galleries and two universities, and was busily pursuing a career in the art world before writing overtook everything. She moved to Norwich in 2010 to study for the MA in Creative Writing at UEA and never moved back again. Elizabeth is Missing was the winner of the 2014 Costa First Novel Award.

Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller (Fig Tree)

1976: Peggy Hillcoat is eight. She spends her summer camping with her father, playing her beloved record of The Railway Children and listening to her mother’s grand piano, but her pretty life is about to change. Her survivalist father, who has been stockpiling provisions for the end, which is surely coming soon, takes her from London to a cabin in a remote European forest. There he tells Peggy the rest of the world has disappeared. Her life is reduced to a piano which makes music but no sound, a forest where all that grows is a means of survival. And a tiny wooden hut that is Everything.

Praise from The Desmond Elliott Prize

“A novel which hooks the reader from the outset with one of the most tantalising of openings […]We are equal captives to the dreams and delusions of this forested prison, in thrall to the music conjured from keys of silence, tucked into that little hut for the duration of an endlessly shocking narrative.”

About the author

Claire Fuller lives in Winchester and has a Master’s Degree in Creative and Critical Writing from The University of Winchester. For her first degree she studied Sculpture at Winchester School of Art, specialising in wood and stone carving. She began writing fiction at the age of 40, after many years working as a Co-director of a marketing agency.

A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray (Hutchinson)

When Issy dies, her father Ian, Bishop of the local congregation, expects the rest of the family to be comforted by the knowledge that they’ll see her again in heaven. But her mother, Claire, won’t get out of her dead daughter’s bottom bunk. She’s never believed in The Book of Mormon in the same way that Ian does. Son Alma thinks the church is a waste of time. He just wants to be a normal teenager; he wants to play football and for Liverpool to win the championship. And Zippy is trying so hard to be virtuous - but she’s seventeen and she thinks she’s in love. While seven-year-old Jacob knows that his faith is bigger than a mustard seed; it’s at least as big as a toffee bonbon, maybe bigger. And he knows that if he wants Issy back, he’s going to have to perform a resurrection miracle.

Praise from The Desmond Elliott Prize

“Carys Bray has wrought the most perfectly sustained rendition of maternal grieving […]Wit flashes in a score of brilliant one-liners, points up the sotto-voce comedy of this song otherwise sad beyond tears.”

About the author

Carys Bray was brought up in a devout Mormon family. In her early 30s she left the church and replaced religion with writing. She was awarded the Scott Prize for her debut short story collection, Sweet Home. She lives in Southport with her four children. A Song for Issy Bradley was shortlisted for the 2014 Costa First Novel Award.