An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It

Greengrass is undoubtedly that rare thing, a genuinely new and assured voice in prose. Her work is precise, properly moving, quirky and heartfelt * AL Kennedy * A number of the individual story titles are fantastic, too. I must also mention that this volume has been beautifully produced and is one of the first offerings from JM Originals, a new list by John Murray . . . You'll want to keep an eye out for others in the series * Bookbag * One of the first books to come from the John Murray Originals imprint (the cover is stunning) which I want to read for the title, and title story, alone * Savidge Reads * The stories in this impressive and unusual debut collection chronicle the lives of the lonely and estranged . . . a highly original collection from a distinctive new voice in fiction * Independent on Sunday * [An] accomplished debut collection . . . She has a Mantel-esque way with metaphor, in which clarity of the image illuminates plot and theme . . . this talented writer has all the resources to break out of her comfort zone * Daily Telegraph * The stories in Jessie Greengrass' debut work would be auspicious even without its singular title . . . Greengrass's scope is ambitious, and at times self-consciously sedulous, compensated for by admirable technical skill, and an exhilarating sense of the unknown . . . The majority of the collection soars. Greengrass's language can switch from elegant and frosty to richly sensual . . . sheer range and conspicuous talent * Financial Times * A striking debut from a British writer with a distinctive philosophical imagination, a precise prose style and an interest in varieties of extinction and survival * Sunday Times * [A] striking first collection * Times Literary Supplement * A collection suffused with isolation and memory but, and critically, a collection that is wrought by a brilliant and original stylist, not something I thought I would have the pleasure of admitting anytime soon... An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It, is published under a new list by John Murray (Byron's publisher), JM Originals, for fresh and distinctive writing. Whoever saved An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It from the slush pile, should be knighted in the New Year's honours list * Echo * Elegant, learned and melancholic * Telegraph * Restraint and a formal writing style, by a philosophy graduate from Cambridge University, give a tone of melancholy to this spectacularly accomplished, chilly debut collection of short stories about thwarted lives and opportunities missed. The strongest are also the most ordinary * The Economist * Highly original and beautifully controlled * Sunday Times *

Jessie Greengrass was born in 1982. She studied philosophy in Cambridge and London, where she now lives with her partner and child. An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It won the Edge Hill Prize 2016.