Last Acts: A Novel

"Again, a first novel. It has a very American sensibility. We start off with what feels like quite an unpromising situation: a man, David Rizzio, in midlife, flailing in debt. He owns a gun shop that is going under. He’s got himself in trouble through various financial Ponzi schemes. His son is a recovering heroin addict who, at the beginning of the book, almost dies of an overdose. David feels there is almost a miraculous aspect to his son’s survival, although they are both pretty unhappy characters at the beginning. So David decides he is going to make the greatest commercial for his gun shop. The comedy is there in a very understated humour, sharp observation about certain aspects of American life and the characters that surround them. It’s more of a slow burn, this one. The characters get their hooks into you. As well as being funny, it’s also quite painful. You do start to really care about these characters by the end of it, absolutely. Yes, that’s what has been really interesting about this shortlist. We have a couple of brilliant American titles, a couple set in different cultural backgrounds, and in different historical periods. It’s a good cross-section that we’ve come up with, I think."