The Young Accomplice

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thriller, romance and coming-of-age to gripping, memorable effect Sunday Times, Best Books for the Year Benjamin Wood is building a sublime body of work. This masterful, suspenseful novel is his best yet. It swallows you up. I love it David Whitehouse, author of About A Son His second novel The Ecliptic (2015) was shortlisted for the Encore Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. A resounding achievement . . . Rich, beautiful and written by an author of great depth and resource Guardian, on The Ecliptic Benjamin Wood's The Young Accompliceis a treat for those who have followed his career ... Its greatest quality is its understanding of how characters exist only in relation to one another. Each pairing gives us a new angle, and added depth, with the clarity of a diamond. Wood's daring narrative decisions show he hasn't lost the old spark, but has just added to it with his new repertoire. What, it asks, are the opportunities available to someone who wants to leap clear of their wrong beginnings? John Self, The Critic Best Books of the Year 2022

Benjamin Wood's tender fourth novel is about nature and idealism, but it also examines responsibility and the fragility of inspiration. New Statesman You may change or cancel your subscription or trial at any time online. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side. This satisfyingly old fashioned- feeling novel from a youngish author strikingly conveys its 1950s rural setting, and has a grim pull of foreboding . . . Benjamin Wood's perspective-shifting novel weaves elements ofIn the summer of 1952, Joyce and Charlie Savigear are waiting on a railway platform in the quiet English countryside. The siblings have just been released from borstal to start a new life as apprentices at Leventree, an architecture practice with a difference. Benjamin Wood was born in 1981 and grew up in northwest England. He is the author of four acclaimed novels. A many-layered story of old-fashioned virtue and ambition, anaccount of the practicalities of “a campaign for a better life”. The Young Accomplice isfinely constructed, with themes of wrongdoing and innocence wovennaturally into the action. Its evocation of an ostensibly decorous postwar world full ofcontradictions is convincing throughout. Benjamin Wood’s attention to detail, his smoothwriting style and his strong beliefs give the novel an unusual dignity, in keeping with the eraof its setting. TLS Exhilarating , earthy, cerebral, frank and unflinching . . . A masterfully paced and suspenseful read' - Independent, on The Ecliptic

Wood's] best novel yet . . . [he] deserves to be far better known John Self, Irish Times, 2022 Books of the YearWith deceptive ease, the books weaves elements of crime, mystery, love story and coming of age . . . a well-wrought novel whose pleasure is in each careful scene, moment and sentence Irish Times The truth is revealed sparingly, until we suddenly find ourselves no longer reading a psychological thriller but an action thriller, reminiscent of old British films. Wood’s natural observational style (Arthur’s realisation, as he looks at a man in the pub, that “every filling in that mouth — and likely everybody else’s in the building — had a faint connection to his wife”, whose father was a dentist, is one example), combined with his sensibility for the vocabulary and syntax of the time (the prose never feels stilted) make The Young Accomplice a well-wrought novel whose pleasure is in each careful scene, moment and sentence. Niamh Donnelly

If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Wood is a seriously talented writer, able to enter the minds of his characters with eerie precision. The Young Accomplice is an involving tale of revenge and responsibility, which, while it devastates, also tells us that new lives can be built among the ashes FT For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. His latest work The Young Accomplice was published by Penguin Viking in June 2022. It was selected as one of the books of the year by The Times ​& Sunday Times, New Statesman, The Spectator, The Irish Times, and others. A serialised version of the novel was broadcast as a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime in April 2023.

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Was this how it was going to be for ever?” wonders Joyce Savigear, facing another afternoon of drudgery at EH Lacey’s department store in postwar Maidstone, Kent. Joyce is 16 and at a crossroads. Before her is mysterious Mal Duggan, looking invitingly up from the driving seat of a Daimler; behind her are endless hours of folding womenswear and polishing counters. “How much worse off would she be if she went driving with a stranger for a while?” Wood writes with superb attention to detail and authenticity. My only question is why the Mayhoods are shown to have a diesel-powered ‘wagon’ at a time when all but the heaviest goods vehicles would have used petrol engines. Set mainly over the second half of 1952, but with brief forays into the years before and after, the narrative follows the siblings after they are released from borstal and taken on as architectural apprentices by Florence and Arthur Mayhood. They live and work together on the Surrey farm where the Mayhoods’ idealistic practice is based: tilling lessons in the morning; draughting classes in the afternoon. A happy time is had for a while, until Mal Duggan reappears.