First things

A FEW years ago Susan Fletcher was just another Eng Lit student at York University with dreams of making a career in writing.

She never expected those dreams to come true so quickly.

Her book Eve Green, begun while still a student, has just picked up the prestigious Whitbread First Novel award. And she's in the running for an even bigger prize - Whitbread's Book of the Year.

"It's a huge shock," the 25-year-old says, sounding almost giggly from the excitement. "My category was the one most people thought was sewn up! It is hard to take in."

Susanna Clarke had been heavily tipped to win the first novel award with her blockbuster Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

So how does she rate her chances of winning the Book of the Year prize? She snorts. "I'm the outsider. But you never know. If Greece can win Euro 2004..."

Critics have been full of praise for Susan's debut novel. It tells the story of eight-year-old Evie who, following the loss of her mother, is sent to a new life in rural South Wales. It's a mysterious place to the little girl - a place where people look at her askance, and where flowers suddenly appear from nowhere on doorsteps. Overcome by the sense that for some reason people are lying to her, she sets out to discover her family's dark secret - unaware that there is yet more darkness to come with the sinister disappearance of local girl Rosemary Hughes.

The story of young Evie is interwoven with that of the mature Eve many years later, waiting for the birth of her own child. When she revisits her past something clicks in her mind and her own reckless role in the hunt for Rosie's abductor all those years before is revealed.

The Whitbread judges - who included bestselling author Joanne Harris - were effusive. The book demonstrated a "luminous quality of writing which lifts it out of the category of a simple coming-of-age novel into something approaching poetry", they said.

Susan began the book in 2002, while studying for a Master's in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Poet laureate Andrew Motion was one of her teachers.

But she admits it was her years studying English and Related Literature at York from 1997-2000 that set her on the road to becoming an author.

"For the first time I was meeting other people that wanted to write," she says.

She admits she never worked out the plot for her novel. What she did have was a clear idea of her heroine, Evie. She isn't based on herself, she insists, apart from sharing her own red, curly hair.

"I made it as non-autobiographical as possible. It took two years to write, and I didn't want to spend that long writing about me. I'm boring!

"She is quite stubborn and independent, and vulnerable with it. Those are the kind of people I like reading about"

She also knew where it was set - rural South Wales near Carmarthen, a place she says she knows well. She began writing while still studying for her MA, and had her work criticised by fellow creative writing students. "It was very daunting," she admits. "It could feel very personal when people said they hated a character. But you learn very quickly to shake that kind of thing off."

Over the next couple of years the book changed constantly as she wrote. "There were times when I found the characters in situations that I hadn't intended, and I just let them do what they wanted," she says.

She finished it while living back at home in Solihull in the West Midlands, working in a Blockbuster video store by day and writing in the evenings. When it was nearly finished, she sent sample chapters off to various literary agents. Most rejected it: one didn't. The book was finished last summer, when she was 24. By September she had a two-book deal.

She is working on her second book. What's it about? "Because of the way the first book kept changing so much, I'm keeping that under my hat," she says. Hopefully, not for too much longer.

Eve Green by Susan Fletcher is published by Fourth Estate, priced £12.99.

Updated: 09:24 Wednesday, January 12, 2005