Stump - Niall Griffiths

A newcomer has arrived in a small Welsh seaside town - a one-armed Liverpudlian. Seeking to rebuild his life, if not his body, he is attempting to lead a life here unlike any life he's lived before: a normal one - shopping, gardening, signing on, visiting friends, all the usual diurnal activities. Over a hundred miles to the north, however, two men in shellsuits are leaving Liverpool, heading south in a rickety old car. They have been sent by their gang-boss to wreak terrible, violent revenge, but have only a rough idea of their quarry: a one-armed man, maybe living somewhere in west Wales, in a small town by the sea. Stump has all the characteristic passion and anger of a Niall Griffiths novel - the intense lyrical language rooted in the natural world he describes - but, after the darkness of the first three books, there is the relief of black farce and scabrous banter, and a move towards a sense of regeneration, towards something resembling hope. Hailed as a major new voice by writers as different as John Banville, A.L. Kennedy, Iain Sinclair and Irvine Welsh, Niall Griffiths is now established as one of the leading writers of his generation.