The Doll Princess by Tom Benn
It's Manchester, July 1996, the month after the IRA bomb, and the Evening News is carrying reports of two murders. On the front page there's a photograph of a glamorous Egyptian woman, a socialite and heiress to an oil fortune, whose partially clothed body has been found in the basement of a block of flats. It would appear that she has been the subject of a sexual attack. In the back pages of the same paper there is a fifty-word piece on the murder of a young prostitute whose body has been found dumped on a roadside near the McVitie's Factory. For Bane - fixer, loanshark and legman for one of Manchester's established ganglords - it's the second piece of news that hits hardest. Determined to find out what happened to his childhood sweetheart, he searches through the tribes and estates of his bombed city for answers. It soon becomes clear that the two newspaper stories belong on the same page, and that Bane's world belongs to others - those willing to profit from gun arsenals, human trafficking and a Manchester in decay. The Doll Princess introduces the mesmeric narrator, Henry Bane, a conflicted man caught up in a mire of evil, and his creator, Tom Benn - an assured and exhilarating new voice in literary crime fiction.
This punchy debut does for low-life Manchester what Trainspotting did for Leith-- Maggie Fergusson * Intelligent Life *
The Doll Princess is a mighty, stick-to-your-fingers, amphetamine- and adrenaline-fuelled chase through an apocalyptic Manchester, written with taut and instinctive control and an admirable feel for weird and wonky poetry. It swaggers and struts and is amazingly accomplished for a writer so young. Subtitled 'Bane: Book One', the promise is of more to come. Very soon, I hope. -- Niall Griffiths
With a carnival cast of bruisers, losers, mystics and psychonauts, Tom Benn's debut is both ribald and tender, delivered with the mordant wit of a latter-day John Cooper Clarke. This is a twister of a thriller and, at the same time, a love song to the rainy city at its core. -- Cathi Unsworth
Tom Benn, Stockport born and bred, is that rare thing. A startlingly new, ridiculously stylish, home-grown voice. Despite more than a casual nod to a rain-sodden Hulme dialect, Benn’s debut is so full of energy and sharp one-liners, it will travel far and wide. -- Henry Sutton * Daily Mirror Book of the Week *
Benn is a sharply observant writer with a great eye for detail, but what really makes this book a cut above the average gangland thriller is the character of Bane himself. -- Laura Wilson * Guardian *
The Doll Princess is a mighty, stick-to-your-fingers, amphetamine- and adrenaline-fuelled chase through an apocalyptic Manchester, written with taut and instinctive control and an admirable feel for weird and wonky poetry. It swaggers and struts and is amazingly accomplished for a writer so young. Subtitled 'Bane: Book One', the promise is of more to come. Very soon, I hope. -- Niall Griffiths
With a carnival cast of bruisers, losers, mystics and psychonauts, Tom Benn's debut is both ribald and tender, delivered with the mordant wit of a latter-day John Cooper Clarke. This is a twister of a thriller and, at the same time, a love song to the rainy city at its core. -- Cathi Unsworth
Tom Benn, Stockport born and bred, is that rare thing. A startlingly new, ridiculously stylish, home-grown voice. Despite more than a casual nod to a rain-sodden Hulme dialect, Benn’s debut is so full of energy and sharp one-liners, it will travel far and wide. -- Henry Sutton * Daily Mirror Book of the Week *
Benn is a sharply observant writer with a great eye for detail, but what really makes this book a cut above the average gangland thriller is the character of Bane himself. -- Laura Wilson * Guardian *
Tom Benn was born in 1987, and grew up in Stockport. He is a graduate of the UEA Creative Writing MA and was the recipient of the 2009 Malcolm Bradbury bursary.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780224093507 |
| ISBN 10 | 0224093509 |
| Title | The Doll Princess |
| Author | Tom Benn |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2012-01-05 |
| Number of pages | 304 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |