Last year we tipped fiction debuts from writers such as Emma Healey and Jessie Burton who went on to win major prizes. Will we get it right in 2015? The Observer’s literary editor Lisa O’Kelly introduces the new year’s crop and we meet the most promising new authors
The start of a new year in the world of books invariably brings with it an avalanche of enthusiastically trumpeted first novels and 2015 is no exception. Over the next few months, all the major publishers have at least one fiction debut – some have two or three – that their publicity machines will be pushing as the Next Big Thing.
It is tempting in the face of hype about “dazzling” new voices (Faber on first-time author Alex Hourston) and “heart-stopping” narratives (Picador on newcomer Ryan Gattis) to be sceptical and turn instead to fiction’s old guard when deciding what to read. And it is true there are plenty of treats in store from established names such as Andrew O’Hagan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Anne Enright, Toni Morrison and Jonathan Franzen, who all have novels due this year. But to dismiss the annual fuss surrounding the new names in fiction as puffery would be a mistake – because among the spring deluge of first novels there are almost always a few real gems.
After all, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth was a debut. So too were The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Brick Lane by Monica Ali, Kathryn Stockett’s The Help and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, to name just a handful. To Kill a Mockingbird was Harper Lee’s first – and famously only – novel. And Catcher in the Rye was JD Salinger’s debut. Proof, if it were needed, that the first try at anything is sometimes the hardest to beat.
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It is tempting in the face of hype about “dazzling” new voices (Faber on first-time author Alex Hourston) and “heart-stopping” narratives (Picador on newcomer Ryan Gattis) to be sceptical and turn instead to fiction’s old guard when deciding what to read. And it is true there are plenty of treats in store from established names such as Andrew O’Hagan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Anne Enright, Toni Morrison and Jonathan Franzen, who all have novels due this year. But to dismiss the annual fuss surrounding the new names in fiction as puffery would be a mistake – because among the spring deluge of first novels there are almost always a few real gems.
After all, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth was a debut. So too were The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Brick Lane by Monica Ali, Kathryn Stockett’s The Help and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, to name just a handful. To Kill a Mockingbird was Harper Lee’s first – and famously only – novel. And Catcher in the Rye was JD Salinger’s debut. Proof, if it were needed, that the first try at anything is sometimes the hardest to beat.
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