Mercia's Take : Winner of the Betty Trask Prize 2023

Wiles received a Booker Prize Fountaion Scholarship to fund the writing of this book, and it was clearly money well spent. This is an outstanding debut from what is an exciting new British writer. It is set in the heart of the Industrial Revolution, in 1872 in a small Black Country village where the landscape and social cohesion are being savagely torn apart by its three collieries. Among those miners, many of them young children, working in the shocking conditions is Michael Cash. He has taken a second job in order to send his six year old son to school. Having worked himself in the mine while still a boy, he is determined that this son won’t suffer the same fate. But when taking that second job loses him his first, he feels his cautious plan slipping through his fingers. That’s enough of the plot to seduce any potential readers. To say any more would spoil the experience, and many reviewers give too much away. Suffice to say that the book has a propulsive plot moving rapidly to a rhythmic beat. It is robust fiction that is deservedly compared to the likes of The Gallows Pole; indeed Benjamin Myers was full of praise in his review for The Guardian. However, this is very much it’s own thing. It has more of an experimental style enriched by its use of the speech and accent of the Black Country, not only in the dialogue, but across the whole of the piece. This use of language encapsulates directness, generosity and a kind of classless intimacy. Behind a seemingly perpetual night, mines and furnaces materialising out of the smog, Wiles reminds us that this is part of the ancient of Mercia, and it’s King, Offa. This was a very powerful and memorable reading experience. That use of language slowing my reading to a crawl, for which I was very grateful in a such a short work. 'A brilliant debut' Guardian 1870s, the Black Country. Michael is a miner. But it's no life for a man. Michael exhausts himself working two jobs, to send his son Luke to school, so he won't have to be a miner too. Down the pit one day, he finds a seam of gold. If he gets it out, he can save his own life, and Luke's. But his workmate has other ideas... Mercia's Take summons an England in the heat of the industrial revolution, and the lives it took to make it. Gripping, powerful and intense, it is the debut of an astonishing new talent. "1870s, the Black Country. Michael is a miner. But it's no life for a man. Michael exhausts himself working two jobs, to send his son Luke to school, so he won't have to be a miner too. Down the pit one day, he finds a seam of gold. If he gets it out, he can save his own life, and Luke's. But his workmate has other ideas... Mercia's Take summons an England in the heat of the industrial revolution, and the lives it took to make it."--Provided by publisher