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…
A panel of judges including Bloomsbury’s editorial director for fiction Helen Garnons-Williams, Sarah Chalfant of the Wylie Agency,the author Polly Samson and Bazaar’s columnist Sam Baker voted unanimously to award joint first prize in the Harper’s Bazaar short story competition to Fatima Bhutto and Jill Dawson. Dawson’s story can be read in the May edition… 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…
This absorbing novel tells the story of a 50-year-old professor’s exploration of identity after receiving a heart transplant. Patrick, an alcoholic and a womaniser, is granted a second chance by accepting the heart of an ill-fated 17-year-old. He then embarks on a mission to find out all he can about his donor. Dawson skilfully entwines… Continue reading…
‘Lucky Bunny (Sceptre), Jill Dawson’s rip-roaring story of an East End girl made good by being defiantly bad; hilarious, poignant and exquisitely written.’ ‘Dawson’s engaging seventh novel (after Trick of the Light) chronicles the exploits of “Queenie” Dove, a highly intelligent Depression-era child from a family of grifters. As a child in London, Queenie acknowledges her fledgling… Continue reading…