Carys Bray FRSL is a British writer whose 2014 debut novel, A Song for Issy Bradley, was critically acclaimed.[1][2] Bray is a lapsed Mormon, and A Song for Issy Bradley is about a Mormon family who undergo a crisis of faith.[1][2]
Her second novel, The Museum of You, was published in 2016.[3]
According to The Bookseller she earned a "strong five figure" advance, in 2019, for a novel about climate change, entitled When the Lights Go Out.[3] The book was published in 2020.[4]
Bray uses a treadmill desk, when writing.[5]
Awards and honours
- 2015: Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award[6]
- 2011: Scott Prize[6]
- 2010: Edge Hill Prize[6]
- 2023: Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL)[7]
References
- ^ a b McCleen, Grace (20 June 2014). "A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray review – admirably unsentimental". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 January 2020.
The book portrays radical religion through the eyes, not of a convert, but the profoundly disillusioned. Bray is wincingly honest and emotions are portrayed with an assurance that comes from understanding: Claire is hoarding 10 pounds a week from the housekeeping money without knowing why; her desire to weep in gratitude as cars pull over during the ambulance ride to the hospital with Issy, wanting not to tell her unconscious daughter stories as she sits in the intensive care unit but memorise every detail of her; Zippy's conviction that her sister's body is completely devoid of "Issy-ness" upon seeing it in the mortuary – all these ring true and make for arresting reading.
- ^ a b Harris, Shelley (29 June 2014). "A Song For Issy Bradley, By Carys Bray, book review: Portrait of Mormons in crisis … by an insider". The Independent. Retrieved 1 January 2020.
Part of the fascination of this novel is that it's a story told from the inside; Bray grew up Mormon before renouncing the faith in her early thirties, and she shows us this arcane world without resorting to caricature.
- ^ a b Wood, Heloise (29 November 2019). "Hutchinson snaps up Carys Bray's climate change novel". The Bookseller. Retrieved 1 January 2020.
- ^ Berwick, Isabel (7 December 2020). "When the Lights Go Out by Carys Bray — climate anxiety". Financial Times. Retrieved 13 November 2023.
- ^ Steiner, Susie (29 June 2017). "Is there any way to avoid writer's butt?". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 January 2020.
Carys Bray, author of A Song for Issy Bradley, writes at a treadmill desk, as does Emma Donoghue, author of Room, and US thriller writer Michael Connolly.
- ^ a b c "Carys Bray - Literature". literature.britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 1 May 2020.
- ^ Creamer, Ella (12 July 2023). "Royal Society of Literature aims to broaden representation as it announces 62 new fellows". The Guardian.