Edinburgh International Book Festival: Sam Byers & Angela Jackson

Sam Byers and Angela Jackson's debut novels are nominated for the Book Festival's First Book Award, alongside 42 other hopefuls. Byers' book Idiopathy tells the story of three characters unhappy in the places they have generated for themselves within society. Katherine and Daniel have broken up after a five-year relationship largely built on mistrust and contrary goals. Their friend Nathan disappeared shortly after the split to battle his own demons and one year on we find the three of them coping with the various psychological traumas of modern life.

Byers speaks of his generation being in touch with and encouraged to explore their feelings more than any previous. The risk, he says, is a kind of infinite introspection in which we examine not only our unhappiness, but why we feel the need to examine our unhappiness, and so on. While his characters are trying to deal with these issues, all the while there is a new bovine disease ravaging the nation's livestock, happening largely unnoticed on TV screens and newspapers the characters ignore. I won't explain the conceit Byers is drawing here, but suffice to say he aims to satirise the stupor that can be modern Western existence.

Jackson's reading is more energised than Byers'. She chooses a wedding scene near the start of her book, in which we get glimpses of the titular character of The Emergence of Judy Taylor. In the extract her prose consists of a kind of comic short-hand, full of witticisms and insights into the absurdities of these kinds of rituals. One can see why these two are deemed a good fit, with Jackson's book also dealing with unhappiness in the constraints of society's expectations. The novel follows Judy's attempts to leave all the apparent success of her previous life and start completely anew, moving to Edinburgh no less.

Asked by an audience member about the process of getting published, Jackson describes her path as relatively smooth, but Byers speaks of another book he wrote first which is yet to be published. The lesson, one that you'll find repeated time and time again at the Book Festival, is the importance of persistence. The difficulties of getting a first work into print are notorious, but a thick skin and the belief to keep writing are essential.