New novels for award-winning University writers

Lara Williams' The Odyssey is published today, while Andrew McMillan's debut novel has been snapped up by Canongate

Manchester Writing School tutor and novelist Lara Williams has released the follow-up to her acclaimed debut, while a top publisher has snapped up the rights to lecturer and poet Andrew McMillan’s first novel.

The Odyssey follows on the heels of Williams’ 2019 debut Supper Club, which received rave reviews and won The Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize. Released on Thursday, The Odyssey is set aboard a cruise ship and is described as “a wickedly funny and slyly poignant new satire on modern life”.

McMillan, author of three award-winning poetry collections, has signed with Canongate to publish his debut novel Pity. Hitting shelves in 2024, it will focus on three generations of one Barnsley family and explore “ideas of community, masculinity, sexuality and stories – what they’re for and who gets to tell them.”

Williams, Tutor in Creative Writing at Manchester Writing School, Manchester Metropolitan University, said: “I knew I wanted to write a novel on a cruise ship, inspired by the David Foster Wallace essay A Supposedly Fun Thing I Never Want To Do Again and the Jon Ronson article Lost At Sea.

“I’ve always been interested in place, and I liked the idea of a cruise ship as it is such a strange, hyperarticulation of place, but is essentially placeless. I also knew I wanted to write something about work, and a cruise ship seemed the perfect uncanny, hermetically sealed setting to explore some of the darker aspects of modern cultures of work.”

McMillan, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, said: “It’s been exciting to test myself in another genre, and I’m really excited to get to tell a new story, with the greater space and freedom that prose allows.”

The Odyssey

The Odyssey tells the story of Ingrid, who works onboard a huge luxury cruise liner. Ingrid is selected for the employee mentorship scheme – an initiative run by the ship’s mysterious captain and self-anointed lifestyle guru, Keith, “who pushes her further than she ever thought possible”.

I also knew I wanted to write something about work, and a cruise ship seemed the perfect uncanny, hermetically sealed setting to explore some of the darker aspects of modern cultures of work.

The book is described as a “merciless takedown of consumer capitalism and our anxious, ill-fated quests for something to believe in”.

Williams’ first novel Supper Club was named as Book of the Year 2019 by TIME and Vogue and has since been translated into six languages. She is also the author of short story collection Treats, which was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Edinburgh First Book Award, and the Saboteur Awards and longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize.

Pity

Pity will allow readers to meet men from Barnsley, “glimpsing their histories and seeing how they strive towards different futures," as well as how they are perceived by the outside world.

Through vivid scenes of the miner’s strike, online sex work, drag shows, shopping centres and the lost industry of South Yorkshire, McMillan’s novel “excavates the nuances of narrative and experience that so often get ignored."

It’s been exciting to test myself in another genre, and I’m really excited to get to tell a new story, with the greater space and freedom that prose allows.

McMillan has released three celebrated and award-winning poetry collections, the most recent pandemonium picked as one of the books of 2021 by The Guardian and the Financial Times. His first collection, physical, was the first poetry collection to win the Guardian First Book Award; it also won a Somerset Maugham Award, an Eric Gregory Award, a Northern Writers' Award and the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize.