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Phoenix has won a three-way auction for two novels by Tom Newlands, including his début Only Here, Only Now.
Publisher Francesca Main acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to the début, described by Newlands’ mentor David Peace as destined to be “one of the great British début novels”, in a two-book deal from Sophie Lambert at C&W. Only Here, Only Now will be published in hardback in spring 2024.
Peace added that the book, set in the blazing hot summer of 1994 and telling the story of Cora, who feels stuck in her small Fife town, “heralds the arrival of an urgent and unique new voice, as engaging and as startling as Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (Vintage), Morvern Callar (Vintage Classics) or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Vintage Digital)”.
Little does Cora know life is about to change with the arrival of a stranger and a tragedy that upends everything Cora thought she knew about who she is and what she might be capable of, the synopsis explains.
“Only Here, Only Now is a classic coming-of-age story from a unique perspective, taking the reader inside the beautiful, brilliant and lightning-quick mind of a teenage girl with ADHD as she navigates the male-dominated world of a council estate in post-industrial Scotland,” Main said.
“Fiercely original but full of warmth and heart, it has one of the most distinctive protagonists I’ve encountered in years and a voice that is both breathtakingly accomplished and irresistibly enjoyable. Tom Newlands is a blinding talent and I feel very lucky and proud to welcome him to the list. I’ll never forget Cora Mowat and can’t wait for readers to meet her.”
Newlands is a Scottish writer and alumnus of the Poetry School and the Faber Academy, and of several writer development programmes including the Curtis Brown Breakthrough Novel Scheme. He is also the winner of the London Writers Award for Literary Fiction, a Creative Future Writers Award and New Writing North’s A Writing Chance.
He said: “I am so thrilled to be able to put my novel in the care of an editor as talented and generous as Francesca; she and the whole team at Phoenix have really blown me away with their commitment to the book and their plans for its future, and I am proud to be in the company of so many incredible authors on the Phoenix list.
“I hoped, in writing Only Here, Only Now, to create a working-class story that would set itself apart through the intensity of the language and the humour of the dialogue. I was keen to take many of the hallmarks of aspirational storytelling – an expansive timeline, vibrant characterisation, lyrical prose – and try to use them in a novel about council estate life. The Scotland I grew up in had its problems, but it is the warmth, the humour and the resilience I remember most. I wanted the novel to reflect that.”