Paddy Crewe’s ambitious, cinematic debut novel set during Georgia’s gold rush in a semi-mythic American south that recalls both Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses and Faulkner’s Light in August...Purporting to be the written account of Yip’s adventures narrated from the comfort of later life, it explores a society in flux, one about to turn its back on religion and embrace greed and individualism...It’s also a rollicking, page-turning wild west adventure, populated by a cast of arresting grotesques, with luminous imagery and an unforgettable protagonist...My Name Is Yip is a remarkably vivid and energetic debut novel; a consummate linguistic performance made all the more extraordinary by the fact that its author is from Stockton-on-Tees rather than Atlanta, Georgia.

This is violent, anarchic American history with echoes of Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End, but Paddy Crewe’s take is startlingly original. Yip’s narrative voice is extraordinary and vivid; it conjures up the stately, ornate language of the early 19th-century writers without being glacial or clotted ... Self-consciously mannered first-person narratives can overwhelm and irritate, but Crewe, a young British writer, has hit gold here. Yip’s tale is immersive and beautiful in unexpected places ... On the strength of this sensational debut, you will be hearing a lot more about Paddy Crewe.

The novel is billed as a western, in the sense that Georgia was on the frontier in the early part of the nineteenth century...But this can more accurately be described as essentially a British literary take on an American-style folk tale, presented from Yip’s perspective in a near stream-of-consciousness; his narration is an eccentric hodgepodge of faux backwoods grammar and Dickensian eloquence...Adventure, characterization, and illumination of the human condition are the standouts here, pathos misting over the tale like water on the gold-flecked stones of the town’s creek...This is Crewe’s debut, and with this distinctive offering, he’s proved himself to be an author to watch.

Paddy Crewe’s debut novel is strong in many ways. The extraordinary use of language is first and foremost. The book is stirringly written, and make no mistake, it is written. Yip, as our narrator, makes it explicit early on that he is actively writing this from a future time and place. This both justifies the highly refined and thoughtful—and very much dialectic to 1850s Georgia—style and undercuts any tension about whatever mortal peril Yip might (and does) find himself in over the course of the story (obviously he survives). Though the style may not be for everyone, it worked well at propelling the narrative forward and making the story memorable and unique ... But there are some weaknesses in style, too. Throughout, a good deal of 'as you will soon find out' occurs in the book. That is to say, the narrator often foreshadows plot events by telling you things ... Things build up well enough—the arc is very character-driven (for the most part), and the characters are deeply compelling—however the ending comes almost entirely out of nowhere and feels almost entirely pointless. It doesn’t really seem to be the ending that the narrative was working up to ... All things considered, My Name is Yip is still an enjoyable read. When Crewe’s in the thick middle of the plot as opposed to the ending, the writing sparkles and his character-work is perhaps second to none. I found myself strongly bonded to Yip and the dear friends he manages to make in spite of his situation, and, at the very least, those are feelings worth enjoying. There’s something to be said about a journey where being voiceless doesn’t hold one back. For all his muteness, Yip speaks volumes, finally finding the connections he longed for and adding something a little bit different to the canon of Southern literature.

Such is the rich imagery that winds through this yarn ... This is a slow-building novel that saves much of its excitement for the back half before ending rather unexpectedly, I felt. I would have enjoyed reading more about the time between Yip’s adolescence and the mature age at which he’s writing this memoir, especially with the richness of its prose and the comic filips that adorn it. Pacing aside, this is a well-considered look at the American South by an outsider (author Paddy Crewe is British) even if it is a bit of a stretch to categorize this as a Western—revisionist or otherwise. Still, it is an entertaining piece of Americana, with prose at once lush and convincingly down home.

Crewe debuts with a rollicking picaresque set in early 19th-century Appalachia...When Yip turns 14, gold is discovered nearby and Yip witnesses firsthand the violence that gold fever can bring. Forced to flee town after killing a man in self-defense, Yip is accompanied by the resourceful Dud Carter, who becomes his guardian angel...The two reluctantly help a man who escaped from slavery on a quest to find his sister, and Yip is abducted by the operator of a traveling show, who makes Yip play the part of a wild boy kept in a cage...Yip, who narrates as an adult, is an enthusiastic storyteller, and his relationship with Dud forms the fervent backbone of the episodic narrative...This memorable string of adventures reads like a one-of-a-kind mash-up of Charles Dickens and Cormac McCarthy