RICHARD T KELLY

One accusation often aimed at modern British novelists is that they lack ambition and an instinct for the big stage. Step forward Richard T Kelly, whose Crusaders (Faber £14.99; January) is a big, generous fiction debut that resurrects a whole tradition of British writing – the state-of-the-nation’s-morals set piece, more familiar from Victorian literature – and breathes new life into it. Set in Kelly’s native northeast between the late 1970s and 1997, the book focuses on a young Anglican priest, John Gore, who has returned to the area to “plant” a new church on a run-down Newcastle estate. Moral conundrums abound as he becomes embroiled with a local hardman with a righteous sense of his own worth, a Labour MP who has thrown over his old political beliefs, and an attractive single mother. Kelly is not afraid to take his time laying out his themes, but what really impresses is his ease with his characters and their milieu. I can’t remember a modern British debut that offers a more convincing portrait of so many from such different walks of life (generally a failing in home-grown novelists), or that paints its portrait of an era and a region with greater credibility. A novelist to watch.

ROSS RAISIN

Another to keep an eye on is this 28-year-old, whose first novel, God’s Own Country (Viking £16.99; March), is a mature, taut and beautifully written study of a perennial outsider. Set on the North Yorkshire Moors, where Raisin grew up, and written with a tangible feel for the local landscape, this spare, haunting first-person narrative takes us inside the mind of young Sam Marsdyke – expelled from school, mentally challenged and working on his family’s farm – as he becomes dangerously obsessed with a girl down the hill. Again, it is the characterisation that so convinces. Raisin has set himself a difficult task in portraying Marsdyke, but pulls off the feat triumphantly.

ARAVIND ADIGA

There was a huge feeding frenzy among publishers when Adiga’s first novel, The White Tiger (Atlantic £12.99; April), was auctioned at the London Book Fair last spring. It is not hard to see why. Unlike almost any other Indian novel you might have read in recent years, this page-turner offers a completely bald, angry, unadorned portrait of the country as seen from the bottom of the heap; there’s not a sniff of saffron or a swirl of sari anywhere. Narrated by Balram, a self-styled “entrepreneur” who has murdered his employer, the book follows his progress from child labourer, via humiliation as a servant and driver, to a mysterious new life in Bangalore. Balram himself is an enticing figure, whose reasons for murder become completely understandable by the end, but even more impressive is the nitty-gritty of Indian life that Adiga unearths – the corruption, the class system, the sheer petty viciousness. The Indian tourist board won’t be pleased, but you’ll read it in a trice and find yourself gripped.

LINDA ROBERTSON

For once, a book blurb that, if anything, undersells its subject. Likening Robertson’s quirky and wonderfully funny memoir, What Rhymes with Bastard? (Fourth Estate £12.99; April), to an edgy Bridget Jones certainly gives you a flavour of the book, but this engaging Scottish exile’s account of her disastrous marriage to a perennially unfaithful (and clinically insane) wastrel, and her adventures as an accordionist in some of San Francisco’s seedier dives, is more risqué – and much, much funnier – than Helen Fielding’s books. The barely concealed venom with which Robertson charts her husband’s hapless attempts at infidelity, the wry matter-of-factness with which she recalls her own disastrous love life, the poignancy with which she discusses her endearingly ordinary parents, and the deadpan innocence with which she chronicles the local underworld (one strip joint features a Russian acrobat in a metal bikini, whose party piece is making sparks fly from her crotch), make this memoir a true delight.

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