When a stranger arranges for you to fall in love there are bound to be some strings attached, as Steve discovers in Matt Thorne’s clever, sinister tale
Matt Thorne
Matt Thorne’s longlisting came four years after he founded the 'New Puritans', a group of writers determined to make stylistic and narrative simplicity the foundation of their fiction
Thorne was just 23 when his first novel, Tourist, was published in 1998 and, combined with the column-inches garnered by the New Puritans manifesto and the accompanying anthology of fiction (All Hail the New Puritans, edited with Nicolas Blincoe), it made him a writer to watch. In fact, the straightforwardness he espoused has found its best expression in his young adult series 39 Castles. As well as his fiction and university teaching roles, Thorne has published a biography of the determinedly non-straightforward musician Prince.