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Victoria Asher is coming to terms with the loss of her parents in a plane crash. The only family she has left is her brother, Gil. 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. Set in a council house haunted by memories of dead family members, Benn’s unflinching storytelling unearths the forgotten working class voices left in the footnotes of Manchester’s industrial history, shrouded by criminal secrecy and steeped in a powerful emotional darkness which left this year’s judges’ ‘bowled over’ and certain that Tom Benn’s talent will only continue to ‘grow and grow’. There was no sex (though there was temptation and a number of passionate kisses). There was a fair amount of bad language of wide variety. Overall, I'd recommend this novel. You’ve written a short horror film, Real Gods Require Blood, and are associated with northern noir. Do these genres help define you as a writer?
And then there is the chemistry between Vic and Ian. It's obvious and instantaneous, but enjoyable non-the-less.
“Oxblood is the Manchester I never knew but could still hear in echo”
More than anything, I was enamoured with Benn's audacity: to tell this raw, violent, compassionate story; to use language in such a thrilling and fresh way; to explore the dark hearts of ordinary people, and to not look away when things get messy; to be, basically, this good' -- D W WILSON My father was a police constable who was stationed at Longsight (and, for a time, at Benchill) and so, even though he would never have shared the reality of his job over the dinner table, as a teenager in the 60's I was savvy enough to sense some of what he was experiencing. Occasionally he would return home with his hand in plaster, after helping to beat a drunken Irishman into his cell. 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.
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. 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. 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). Once she is involved with the team though, bad things start happening and some in the team start suspecting she might be a mole, but who the real mole was will surprise them all.My only disappointment was with how much was left unexplained at the end. In the finale, one character was not where he was supposed to be, but we never find out why. Another was essentially captured but somehow still got away. Okay, but how? I read the Advanced Reader (unfinished) version of the book, so maybe the final version fills in these blanks. When Victoria realizes something could be terribly wrong with her brother’s trip though, she gets on a plane and leaves for Italy even though it terrifies her. Once there she realizes how hard it is going to be to find Gil. She also meets a certain someone who ends up showing her a whole new world that she didn’t even know existed while at the same time finally giving her a purpose. The gangland novel you have never read before, the one that gets inside the minds of three generations of women whose lives are bound to the crime lords of Wythenshawe by blood, flesh, fear, desire and a hunger for possession that cannot be contained in one lifetime. In a place where Mean Streets meets Most Haunted, with his hyper-intense, hallucinogenic prose, Benn will make you believe in ghosts' -- CATHI UNSWORTH A blistering portrait of a family on fire, Oxblood lays bare the horror of violence, the exile of grief, and the extraordinary redemptive powers of love. I don’t know what books will make you laugh but here are some that make me laugh: Kafka’s The Trial, Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, Richard Price’s Ladies’ Man, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, and Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater. Basically, any screwball tragedy or harrowingly absurd story in which characters confront their own shadows, or experience surreal, mundane or violent social hypocrisies. Whether the torment is a cosmic justice, self-inflicted or a persecution, experiencing the worst day in a fictional life is very funny to me. A book that might move me to tears?
As she starts to work with the team and gets to know all of them, we see her start to grow confidence, as well as feeling like she is a part of something and helping. I loved how the whole team worked together yet, was each an individual as well. They are their own little family that will do anything to protect one another.a book to get lost headlong in. Tom Benn manages to be heart-felt and attentive and generous, without ever resorting to being sentimental..Wonderfully written, deft and pungent and sensuous. It is honest and truthful, but also a great feat of fiction -- STIG ABELL 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. The involvement of Franzen gives this entertaining translation of Brussig’s charming East German novel plenty of star quality. But you can see why the American was so keen to bring this superb slice of life behind the Berlin Wall to a wider audience. Written in 1999, each chapter from the point of view of teenager Michael, it is a pitch-perfect takedown of the totalitarian experience. A reminder that no matter the harshness of a situation, a community can still live with hope and humour. Oxblood So, Ian as a love interest irritated me but Ian as a spy was ultra-cool. And, I wish there had been more of Claudia. She was incredibly intriguing and I would have enjoyed seeing her interact with Vic more than they did.
An unruly novel about northern nanas in a haunted council house probably sounded like a risky investment to mainstream gatekeepers. There was little that was recent and comparable with Oxblood to point at and say: Well, that broke through; this might just too. What are the traps and tropes associated with working-class fiction?Oxblood is a landmark novel shifting the perspective on male violence towards the female experience of grief, love and resilience. Oxblood is a propulsive, bountiful, fearless work of literary art. The female characters at the heart of Benn’s tale are single-minded, dogged and so completely convinced of themselves and their actions, that the reader is persuaded to be stirred by them and to remember them. It is clear that this is only the beginning for Tom Benn. His work is a vehicle for that rare unflinching look at our rawness, our brutality and our vulnerability.‘
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