Salvage Reviews and Awards
Back to Talking to Gee Williams
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction Nominee
Longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award, 2007-08
Pure Gold Winner, English category, Estyn Allan north Wales libraries
Longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award, 2007-08
Pure Gold Winner, English category, Estyn Allan north Wales libraries
“For an absorbing, finely-tuned literary whodunnit whose last page comes far too soon, Gee Williams's Salvage (Alcemi) is hard to beat." Suzy Ceulan Hughes, Guardian Readers Pick of 2008
"A controlled and gifted stylist, Williams is inventive and inspiring in her craft. Salvage masquerades as a murder mystery while exploring the less sunlit aspects of the Welsh shoreline and of the human soul. Dominant and daring in her prose, Williams relishes the act of writing and constructs five distinct characters with genres particular to each, including a wonderful Cosmo send-up for the gorgeous gold-digging nurse as well as a provocative intervention of the author herself. Salvage constantly shifts the literary goalposts from crime to romance to a metafictional crisis while never losing the immediacy of the characters or the suspense of the crime.” Prof Colin Nicholson, JTB Prize Judge
“If Gee Williams was a more celebrated author she could win {the JTB} competition. Brilliant.”blindmanwithapistol.blogspot.com
Read the Blog“Williams' writing is off-beat, subtle, haunting, fresh.”
Kate Long"Her style is wonderfully varied and the characterisation is excellent."
Morning StarThe novel has the distinction of being both a page-turner and one that you want to savour. I often found myself going back to re-read delicious phrases that summed up the human condition in simple but effective terms; that and the luscious descriptions of Wales... Salvage is the least predictable novel I've read in a long time; fresh, subtle, sad, unique and beautifully written in simple, poetic prose.]The New Writer
“Williams feeds us little entrails to keep the haunting pages turning, only to find, at each change of narrator, that we chose the wrong starter for the main course...[her] prose passages ebb and flow with a sparkling beauty, each containing tideline treasures of their own that remain deposited in your mind long after you've put the book down... Salvage is a gripping, unpredictable read that endears each of its colourful characters to us, flaws and all.” Planet
“Riveting... Salvage is a novel that defies genre and crosses boundaries to extraordinary effect... an author utterly in control of her material... nothing superfluous... nothing merely clever.”
www.gwales.com
“Salvage is imbued with a haunting sense of credibility that can do nothing but satisfy.
With descriptive prose that enriches each page and paragraph... a fine writer.”
Chris High, Tangled Web crime website
"Power-sprayed with literary devices...Salvage is ultimately effective, conveying one inescapable message: never trust anybody in Cheshire."
Phil Rickman, Radio Wales
“Almost subliminally affective, Salvage crosses fictional boundaries: a page-turner.”
Glenda Beagan
“I found myself completely caught up in the lives of the characters.”
Y Negesydd