Waterstones has selected six “astonishingly impressive and inspiring new voices” for its fourth debut fiction prize shortlist, including Catherine Airey, William Rayfet Hunter and Lucy Steeds.
The shortlist, which also features Gurnaik Johal, Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin and Lisa Ridzén, represents a “bright and promising future for fiction”, said Bea Carvalho, head of books at Waterstones.
Airey was shortlisted for Confessions, a multigenerational family saga, described as “a cool, bold image of female pain and liberation” by Daisy Hildyardin the Guardian.
Hunter made the list for Sunstruck, in which an aspiring musician is invited to spend the summer at a mansion in the south of France with a university friend.
“The novel’s brisk pacing, together with its shrewd blend of emotional sincerity, brooding intrigue and political overtones, make for a lively beach read,” wrote Houman Barekat in aGuardian review. “The prose reads like a cross between an airport romance and a screenplay for a Saltburn-style television drama.”
The shortlist “tackles weighty themes and has a lot of fun along the way, celebrating art and transgression, first love and hedonistic summer holidays, and the joy of chosen family,” said Carvalho. “It also showcases light-footed and playful prose full of verve and panache.”
The winner of the prize will be announced on 24 July, and is set to receive £5,000 along with the “promise of ongoing commitment to the winner’s writing career”.
Steeds was selected for The Artist, which is about an aspiring journalist who goes to visit a renowned and reclusive artist living in Provence with his niece. “With lavish, luxurious description, Steeds evokes the sensory environment: the smell of hot earth, the sound of crickets, sunlight on soft yellow stones, ‘a constellation of fireflies … spreading and regrouping like a net of stars,’” wrote Christobel Kent in aGuardian review.
“A seductive combination of romance, puzzle and poetry, The Artist also offers a considered interrogation of the value of art: to open windows in human existence, to push against limits, to bring freedom, perspective and light.”
The shortlist also features Saraswati by Johal, Ordinary Saints by Ní Mhaoileoin, and When the Cranes Fly South by Ridzén, translated from Swedish by Alice Menzies.
When the Cranes Fly South, a bestseller in Sweden, is the first translated novel to be shortlisted for the prize. It is about an elderly man, Bo, living in a rural village in the north of Sweden with his dog, which his son insists must be taken away. The idea for the book came to Ridzén through the discovery of notes her grandfather’s care team had left.
More than 600 Waterstones booksellers were involved in the selection of the shortlist, and a panel of booksellers will choose the winner.
Previous winners of the award are Tess Gunty, Alice Winn and Ferdia Lennon, whowon last yearfor his novel Glorious Exploits, andwent on to winthe Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize.