Dawson often draws on real people for inspiration in her novels, and this one is no exception. Here, she takes the fascinating character of the legendary crime novelist Patricia Highsmith as both a subject for biographical scrutiny and the protagonist of an imagined story, in which Highsmith crosses the line between writing about murderers and… Continue reading…
Jill Dawson’s latest novel The Tell-tale Heart has been included as one of the 80 books nominated for the Folio Prize for works of fiction published in 2014. The award is judged by 235 writers and critics who select the best novels of the year. The Folio Prize Academy’s role in selecting these 80 books is integral… Continue reading…
The Tell-Tale Heart is a Spectator Book of the Year, chosen by Sofka Zinovieff. ‘I’ve loved all Jill Dawson’s novels (especially Wild Boy) and The Tell-Tale Heart is another example of her powerful yet delicate, intelligent, haunting writing.’ Continue reading…
It just so happened that both Annabel and I had copies of Jill Dawson’s new novel, The Tell-Tale Heart, and by swiftness of reading and writing, Annabel’s was the review that made it into Shiny New Books. I’ve been saving up mine for the blog, though, as we both agreed it was one of the… Continue reading…
‘Patrick, at first an unsympathetic character, becomes easier in his skin, denying all personality changes to his surgeon while demonstrating the opposite in his actions – but then who wouldn’t after such an extraordinary experience. Dawson has Maureen, his transplant co-ordinator, rehearse the theories of cellular memory, then steps quietly aside as Patrick speculates about… Continue reading…
The Fens don’t receive much fictional attention, perhaps due to an assumption that a landscape so lacking in dramatic topography must have no interesting stories to tell. As one apologetic inhabitant of the Cambridgeshire countryside admits in Jill Dawson’s novel: “The Fens. Most people find them – boring. Most people think they’re a bit flat.”… Continue reading…
Over the course of The Tell-Tale Heart, we watch as Patrick, an unhealthy fifty-year-old academic, changes from a grubbily sensuous, selfish egotist to someone chastened and purified, much to the sur-prise of his children and ex-partners. What’s got into him? A new heart, figuratively as well as literally; Dawson leaves no meta-phor unturned in this… Continue reading…
Dawson, whose previous novels include Fred and Edie, shortlisted for the Whitbread and the Orange Prizes, is an elegant but easy writer. She swiftly hooks the reader in with strong, convincing narrative voices, pacy dialogue, carefully crafted prose and an engagingly dramatic plot. Important too is one of Dawson’s trademarks, an evocative, brooding sense of… Continue reading…
‘An accomplished novel by a great writer’ Patrick, 50, Professor of American Studies, womaniser – he has an ex-wife and two children, an ex-mistress and a third child almost the same age as his second, and a mature student ex-lover who’s filed a complaint of sexual harassment against him – is only the third person… Continue reading…
‘Dawson’s immediately engrossing narrative opens in the ICU in the aftermath of the surgery and it is clear that the recipient of Drew’s heart is someone not everyone would consider deserving of a second chance……Dawson navigates this territory with a freshness and wit that belie a seasoned novelist. In 200 short pages, she seamlessly elides… Continue reading…