A NOD FROM THE GOLDSMITH'S PRIZE CHAIR!!!!

I love it when, once a book competition is over, a judge singles out for mention some other books that were worth commending but didn’t make the shortlist. I knew my publisher, Fairlight Books, had entered my wee Blue Postcards into this year’s Goldsmith’s Prize (a big UK prize awarded to novels that are novel and which extend the form). When the shortlist of six was announced in October I did hope – well you would wouldn’t you? And I was a little disappointed not to find my name on the list. But then you move on.

Thrilled today to be told that the chair of the judges, Nell Stevens, now the winner has been announced, has mentioned some other books she thought worthy of recognition. I love that and I love it all the more because Blue Postcards is one of the four books she has singled out. I feel like a writer again! Here is her tweet about the four books she draws attention to:

https://twitter.com/nellstevens/status/1458727440210141186?s=20

Yet Another Nice Review - The Historical Novel Society

Just spotted a review of Blue Postcards by Marilyn Pemberton for The Historical Novel Society, and it's another nice one too:

'This novella has an unusual format in that the paragraphs, even sometimes just single sentences, are all numbered, with white space between each one. Each piece of text never contains any more words than would fit onto a postcard. Each “postcard” continues one of three connected stories.

There is the story of Henri, a Jew, who, in the 1950s, is the last tailor in what was once the Street of Tailors. He always sews a hidden blue Tekhelet thread somewhere into the trousers for luck. His life is transformed by the daily visit of a lady in a dress of blue flowers. Is she real or just from the “blue mists of memory,” from happier times?

The second story is the artist Yves Klein (1928 – 1962), who is famous for his blue monochrome paintings. Klein was real, but was Henri, and did he make the artist a suit? There are such things as blue lies, which are those told for the benefit of the community.

The third story is purportedly set in the present day, whenever that is, and tells of the narrator himself, who finds a postcard of Klein’s blue monochrome at a stall by the Eiffel Tower, run by Michelle, a girl many years his junior. They both have a love of swallows and of blue and her habit of pushing her hair behind her ear reminds him of his mother. This could be a bitter sweet love story or, again, it could be a story based purely on a remembrance or a longing.

Although the stories are simple, they are beautifully told, and the musings on the colour blue, truth, lies, memory and time will remain with the reader for far longer than it took Bruton to write them, which was apparently just six days. Highly recommended.

(https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/blue-postcards/?fbclid=IwAR1V1WymsqZe5T-mxM8pbChE6F3fAbR7KYFW06yjtTpQC7Ki0BozhaeJSgQ)