The Miseducation of Evie Epworth - Matson Taylor’s debut novel looks set to be a hit

Matson Taylor’s The Miseducation of Evie Epworth, published by Simon & Schuster last week, is a book that is likely to get a lot of attention. It’s funny, it’s quirky, it’s uplifting and it’s nostalgic – exactly the kind of book that we probably all need at the moment.

The Yorkshire-born author now lives in London but he clearly still feels a strong connection with his home county, the setting for his charming coming-of-age story which has been described as ‘Adrian Mole meets Cold Comfort Farm’. The heroine is 16-year-old Evie Epworth, who lives on a farm in rural East Yorkshire with her widowed father Arthur. On the cusp of womanhood, Evie is trying to figure out exactly what kind of woman she wants to become while contending with scheming would-be stepmother Christine.

The story is largely presented in diary form beginning in June 1962. It works very well but it’s interesting that Taylor chose to write a first person narrative in a female voice. “I wanted to put a distance between myself and my protagonist to make it as clear as possible that this was all made up,” he explains. “I think if I had written it in a male voice, people would have thought that it was about me. Also there is this, possibly apocryphal, story about my mum who grew up on a farm as a teenager taking her dad’s car and driving off along the country lanes. I thought what a brilliant opening to a book that would make.”

It does indeed grab the reader’s attention and establishes Evie’s character from the outset – she’s free-spirited, spontaneous, a risk-taker. “In the very first line her voice just came through,” says Taylor who in his ‘day job’ works as a design historian and academic writing tutor. “I had the idea for the book gnawing away in my head for a few years and I hit my forties and thought ‘now is the time, I have got to do it’.”

He enrolled on the Faber six-month novel writing course and it was the kickstart that he needed, but he still had to fit his writing around his full-time work. “It was quite hard – I would do an hour or so before going to work and then three or four hours when I got home so it took me a while – I was the tortoise on the course. Everyone else had finished and I was only on chapter five. It took me about two years to write.”

Having completed the manuscript in January 2019, he began approaching agents and was picked up very quickly. “I sent out the first five emails one Monday and the next day I started getting replies – it wasn’t what I expected at all, I felt like Cinderella.”

The response to the book so far has been very positive. “It’s been a bit overwhelming,” he says. “People are reacting in the most amazing way to Evie and the other characters who lived in my head for so many years. I wanted the book to be funny, to make people smile and feel joyful but it feels like, particularly at this time, it’s been able to really cheer people up.” The good news is he is already working on a follow-up which continues Evie’s story.

Matson Taylor will be talking about his novel on BBC Radio 2 Book Club on August 10.