Catherine Hall's "simmering, brooding" story of a young Cambridge mathematician in a hostile Lake District village, The Proof of Love, has won the Green Carnation prize.
In its second year, the award has expanded its remit to include fiction and memoirs by lesbian, transgender and bisexual authors as well as gay men, with big literary names including Colm Tóibín and Jackie Kay making the shortlist last month.
But it was Hall's second novel The Proof of Love, set during the long summer of 1976 as mathematician Spencer Little attempts to fit into life in a small Lakeland village, that eventually triumphed. The author, whose writing was described as Wordsworthian in the Guardian, shows how Spencer, working as a labourer, gradually becomes accepted by suspicious locals, starting to uncover their secrets as the novel winds its way towards tragedy.
Chair of judges Simon Savidge, a journalist and book blogger, called it an "extraordinary" book. "This is one of those rare novels in which you get so lost you forget that it is fiction. The characters walk off the page and you can feel the atmosphere simmering and brooding in every sentence," he said. "It's a book that quietly takes you by the hand, leading you gently into a false sense of security before gripping you and it doesn't let go until the very last moment. It is the sort of novel that storytelling and reading are all about, wonderfully written and a book you want to pass on and recommend to everyone you know."
Hall said she was "utterly delighted" to win the Green Carnation award, which comes without prize money. "[It's] a completely unexpected pleasure, especially given the calibre of the other writers on the shortlist," she said, adding that the prize was "a great way of raising the profile of LGBT writing, which I think can only be a good thing".
Judges for the prize also included the authors Stella Duffy and Paul Magrs, theguardian.com/books deputy editor Michelle Pauli and blogger Nick Campbell.
Last year's inaugural prize was won by Christopher Fowler's memoir Paperboy.
