Press Association Newsfile
January 6, 2009 Tuesday 2:45 AM BST
AUTHORS CELEBRATE AWARDS SUCCESS
by Vicky Shaw, Press Association Arts Correspondent
Authors Sebastian Barry, Sadie Jones, Diana Athill, Adam Foulds and
Michelle Magorian have been named as category winners of the Costa
Book Awards.
Barry triumphed in the Novel Award category for The Secret Scripture
after missing out on the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in October.
Athill won the Biography Award for her memoir, Somewhere Towards the
End, and at 91 is the oldest-ever category-winning author in the
history of the awards.
Magorian, the author of the hugely successful Goodnight Mr Tom, won
the Children’s Book Award for Just Henry, her first new book in 10
years.
The Costa Book Awards recognises the most enjoyable books of the last
year by writers based in the UK and Ireland.
The five books are now eligible for the Costa Book of the Year – and
bookies William Hill placed Barry at 2-1 favourite to win.
Originally established in 1971 by Whitbread, Costa took over the
sponsorship of the prize in 2006.
“The Costa Book Awards have an excellent track record of recognising
and celebrating some of the very best current British writing, and
books that can be enjoyed by everyone,” said John Derkach, managing
director, Costa.
“We’re very proud to be announcing such an outstanding collection of
books which we know people will enjoy reading.
“Our final judges will have a tough time selecting just one from
these five for the title of Costa Book of the Year – but it makes for
a very exciting awards ceremony later this month.”
The winners, each of whom receive £5,000, were selected from 616
entries, the highest number ever received.
The Costa Book of the Year will be selected by a panel of judges
chaired by columnist and broadcaster Matthew Parris and including
Rosamund Pike, Michael Buerk, Alexander Armstrong and Andrea
Catherwood.
It will be announced at an awards ceremony hosted by Mariella Frostrup
at the Intercontinental Hotel in central London on January 27.
Since the introduction of the Book of the Year award in 1985, it has
been won eight times by a novel, four times by a first novel, five
times by a biography, five times by a collection of poetry and once by
a children’s book.
The 2007 Costa Book of the Year was won by AL Kennedy for Day.
Here are the five successful authors who will compete 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 wins 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 wins 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 wins 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.”