Lark - WINNER OF THE 2020 CARNEGIE MEDAL (The Truth of Things)

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This is the first book in McGowan’s series not to feature a person on the cover – which is striking given they’re all named after animals – and it breaks from the photorealist style entirely.

I want to see the shortlist and the winners continue to grow richer, especially in relation to race – because for sure Black British children are starving for books about themselves – but also in relation to a whole wide range of experience. McGowan wrote his first book, the gory and violent Abandon Hope, while working as a civil servant, but it was rejected by every publisher to which he sent it. Yourself and Bob are much cherished in our booky world and I personally really appreciate everything that you do.Since 2017, when the all-white longlist and shortlist prompted widespread and well-founded criticisms about the lack of diversity in the Medal, CILIP has implemented a wide-ranging review of both the Carnegie and Greenaway Medals and has begun the process of change. In our shadowing group this year, we had some debate about whether it was relevant that Lark was published by Barrington Stoke.

You don't really have to have read the other stories: Brock, Pike and Rook but it helps as this one draws to a close the story of the two brothers and their Mum and Dad and their Dad's new girlfriend. Their close relationship is shown in the great dialogue and the way they are reluctant to show emotion, but tenderly look after each other as best they can. However and the above having been said, Anthony McGowan's writing for Lark, it is absolutely wonderful (lyrical, uncompromising, emotional), with McGowan’s prose being spare but also never simple and packing a textual punch that many novellas, that many short stories aimed at younger readers aim for but which only a select few ever actually manage to truly achieve. An uncompromising and heartbreaking end to the story of Nicky and Kenny, the beloved brothers of the Carnegie shortlisted Rook, beautifully told in McGowan’s gritty realism. As the daylight slips away and the weather worsens, Nicky tells Kenny stories to keep them both occupied, along with assurances they’ll reach their destination soon.They live with their dad, love and dysfunction in uneasy coexistence as we pick up clues regarding alcohol dependency and ‘so many times flitting from the rent. This wasn’t a thing I was really conscious of aged 15, and I wonder how the ending of the book resonates for readers of Nicky’s age. In a year with quite a few shortlisted books I would have been happy to see win, I was utterly delighted that the Medal went to this one. The shortlists for the last two years have shown some of the effects of this: we’ve had several non-white authors shortlisted, and this year finally saw a Black British author (Dean Atta) make it to the shortlist. But to be brutally honest, if you want and even more so if you require a happy and/or a promising conclusion for Lark, sorry, but this is not something being textually offered up by Anthony McGowan's text, and that Lark will leave you or should leave you in tears and massively emotionally upset (a realistic ending for Nicky and Kenny being caught unprepared on the Yorkshire moors during an unexpected blizzard, but admittedly, I would emotionally speaking most definitely prefer less pain and a not so ultimately devastating final outcome in Lark and as such for Anthony McGowan's four novella series of Kenny and Nicky).