My Name is Yip by Paddy Crew (Doubleday Books, 2022)
Historical Fiction
This recommendation comes from Gail Wylie: My Name is Yip by Paddy Crewe (ISBN:9780857527912). “Quite simply – this is one of the most remarkable books I’ve read. Yip, whose name is more of a sound than a word, is unable, from birth, to emit even that most rudimentary of noises. With looks that set him even further apart, he nevertheless finds himself caught up with deeds, and people in mid-19th century southern USA that put him in increasingly dangerous situations. This enthralling tale of good and evil, loss and discovery, safety and danger is told in an original and unforgettable way. Yip may remind you of characters in the novels of William Faulkner, Gunter Grass, Charles Dickens – even Shakespeare’s ‘Fools’ who are wiser than their masters. But he remains completely unique. In Yip, Paddy Crewe created a character without a voice and given his readers one of the strongest narrative ‘voices’ I can think of: ‘Out the window I see the heavens is opening up, big old feathers of snow come drifting down in a dance with no 2 steps the same’.”