THE FIVE PITCHING FOR THE BOOK AWARD
by Vicky Shaw
Press Association Newsfile
January 27, 2009 Tuesday 2:46 AM BST
Here are the five successful authors who were competing for the
Costa Book of the Year, selected by different groups of judges,
and their books:
Sebastian Barry triumphed in the Novel Award category for The Secret
Scripture.
The book centres around Roseanne McNulty, perhaps nearing her 100th
birthday – no one is quite sure – who faces an uncertain future,
as the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital where she’s spent the best
part of her adult life prepares for closure.
Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her
psychiatrist Dr Grene.
Dublin-born playwright and novelist Barry has won many awards including
the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Prize, the London Critics’ Circle Award
and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize.
Judges said: "This exquisitely written love story takes you on an
unforgettable journey – you won’t read a better book this year."
Diana Athill won the Costa Biography Award for her memoir, Somewhere
Towards the End.
Looking back on a life well lived and the stories, events and
relationships that have peppered it, Athill offers reflections on
the lessons she has learned – lessons that it is said will strike a
universal chord with readers in any stage of life.
She writes with intimate honesty about friendship, love, sex, and
sore feet.
Athill worked for the BBC throughout the Second World War and helped
establish the publishing company Andre Deutsch.
She has written five volumes of memoir including the acclaimed Stet,
and one novel. She lives in London.
The judges described the work as: "A perfect memoir of old age
– candid, detailed, charming, totally lacking in self-pity or
sentimentality and above all, beautifully, beautifully written."
Sadie Jones won the First Novel Award for The Outcast.
The book, set in 1957, centres around Lewis Aldridge travelling back
to his home in the South of England. He is straight out of jail and
19-years-old.
His return will trigger the implosion not just of his family, but of
a whole community.
Jones was born in London and grew up in a creative environment. Her
father is the Jamaican poet Evan Jones.
The Outcast was shortlisted for the 2008 Orange Prize, selected as
a Richard & Judy Summer Read, has been serialised on Radio 4’s Book
at Bedtime and won the Good Housekeeping Best Debut Award. Jones is
married to the architect Tim Boyd, has two children and is currently
working on her second novel.
The judges said: "This book’s portrayal of pain makes it a riveting and
heartbreaking read – it’s rare for a first novel to be this assured."
Michelle Magorian won the Children’s Book Award for Just Henry.
Set in post-war Britain, Just Henry is the story of a young boy who
escapes the bleakness of life through his passion for cinema.
His stepfather, whom he despises, will never compare with his dead
father, a war hero.
Magorian was born in Southsea, Portsmouth, of a Welsh mother and
Irish father with an Armenian surname, and began writing regularly
while studying at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama in Kent.
Having studied mime with Marcel Marceau, she went on to work in
theatre, television and film, and toured her one-woman mime show in
Italy and England.
Her first novel, Goodnight Mister Tom, won numerous awards and has
sold more than 1.2 million copies in the UK alone.
The judges said: "This is a master storyteller at work with the sort
of descriptive writing that is a joy to read.
"Just Henry is a soaring, uplifting warm bath of a book – a wonderful
roller-coaster of a story which we all absolutely loved."
Adam Foulds won the Poetry Award for The Broken Word.
The Broken Word is a "delicate and powerful" poetic sequence that
charts a young man’s progress through a dark period in British colonial
history – the Mau Mau uprisings in Kenya.
Foulds lives in South London and is a graduate of the Creative Writing
MA at the University of East Anglia. His poetry has appeared in a
number of literary magazines.
He wrote his first novel, The Truth About These Strange Times, while
working as a forklift truck driver in a warehouse.
He went on to win The Sunday Times Young Writer of The Year Award in
April 2008. The Broken Word is Foulds’s first work of poetry.
The judges said: "It is a rare achievement to write a poetry book
that the reader simply can’t put down.
"Readers of poetry and fiction alike will be swept along by its
chilling narrative."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
