Our third finalist is in the Fiction category; Ewan Morrison’s Close Your Eyes is described as ‘his most accomplished book yet...a complex, thought-provoking and deeply ambitious book…’
Close Your Eyes – Ewan Morrison (Vintage)
In 1981 a mother abandoned her child and drove into the night, never to return. Her disappearance was reported in the press as a fatal road accident. Her body was never found.
Thirty years later, Rowan has a child of her own. Afflicted by post-natal depression, she is convinced that she’ll hurt her daughter unless she unpicks the mystery of her past, buried deep within a commune in the remote highlands of Scotland. Leaving her young family and life in London, she returns to her childhood home to find a failed utopia shrouded in secrecy. And there, with a looming cult leader, among the rites and rituals, the sacraments and ceremonies, is a single postcard dated a week after her mother’s death. As she draws ever closer to the truth about her mother, she fears she might lose even herself.
About the Author
Ewan Morrison was a finalist in the Saltire Book of the Year and the Creative Scotland Writer of the Year 2012, and the winner of the Glenfiddich and the Not the Booker 2012. He brought out his latest books Tales From the Mall and Close Your Eyes in the same year. He has published three previous novels, and is a regular and provocative voice in The Guardian.
What Ewan say’s about being a finalist for the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards
On being the 2013 Fiction Winner: “My Goodness. I remember when Edwin Morgan won one of the Book Awards, then Ali Smith and James Kelman and Janice Galloway – all heroes of mine. So I’m quite in shock to be on the same platform as them. In a way they were the ladder that got me here. I have to thank them for their commitment to a very special kind of literary culture that is unique to Scotland.”
Click to vote for Ewan and watch the animation of him talking about Close Your Eyes
Follow Ewan on Twitter @MrEwanMorrison
The Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards take place on Saturday November 2nd at 6.15PM - Buy tickets
