ACCOLADE FOR SCOTS AUTHOR

A SCOTTISH author has won the Richard and Judy Summer Book Club award with her debut novel. Jackie Copleton’s A Dictionary Of Mutual Understanding beat bestsellers such as The Last Act Of Love, by Cathy Rentzenbrink, and Girl On The Train, by Paula Hawkins, to take the top spot, voted for by readers. Miss Copleton, from Glasgow, told the Scottish Daily Mail: ‘I expected to be at the bottom of the pile given the other writers on the list. They are huge names and talents who, collectively, have sold millions. ‘It shows there is still a good appetite for stories told by first-time writers. I confess on many mornings on my way to work I have popped into WH Smith at Glasgow Central Station to stare in wonder at the novel on the shelf.’ A Dictionary Of Mutual Understanding follows a family through six decades after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, during the Second World War. Richard Madeley said: ‘An absolutely absorbing Japanese story, riven with tenderness, brutality, love and pain. A tour de force for Jackie Copleton, who taught English in Nagasaki, where the novel is set.’