Costa Book of the Year

Author Sebastian Barry has won the Costa Book of the Year Award for The Secret Scripture. Chairman of the judges Matthew Parris said the decision was an "extraordinarily close finish" with poet Adam Foulds' The Broken Word. Of the nine judges, five were for The Secret Scripture and four for The Broken Word, and one of the five for The Secret Scripture wavered.

Both books were featured as "Books of the Week" last year. Barry just missed out on the Man Booker Prize, so this success is particularly merited. It is very difficult to compare two such very different books - both are of very high quality, and both come from writers who are successful as poets and novellists. However, if forced to choose my Irish bias would have come to the fore, so I think that the judges got it right.

Book of the Week - Gil Adamson, The Outlander

The Outlander is a first novel by Gil Anderson, who has previously published two volumes of poetry and one of short stories. She lives in Toronto, and The Outlander has received wide acclaim and a number of awards in Canada. UK reviews are also very good, and signed copies of the Bloomsbury first edition are uncommon but still available at £12.99, which is a very good buy.

Set in 1903, Adamson's debut novel tells the wintry tale of 19-year-old Mary Boulton (“widowed by her own hand”) and her frantic odyssey across Idaho and Montana. The details of Boulton’s sad past—an unhappy marriage, a dead child, crippling depression—slowly emerge as she reluctantly ventures into the mountains, struggling to put distance between herself and her two vicious brothers-in-law, who track her like prey in retaliation for her killing of their kin. Boulton’s journey and ultimate liberation—made all the more captivating by the delirium that runs in the recesses of her mind—speaks to the resilience of the female spirit in the early part of the last century.

Book of the Week – John Stack, Ship of Rome

This is a first novel by an Irish Author from County Cork, set against the background of the First Punic War between Carthage and Rome. The book is also the first in a proposed series, and is already into multiple printings of the hardcover, with a paperback available in addition. First editions are staill available from some dealers, although sold out from others. Definitely one to watch!

Atticus‚ captain of one of the ships of Rome′s small‚ coastal fleet‚ is from a Greek fishing family. Septimus‚ legionary commander‚ reluctantly ordered aboard ship‚ is from Rome‚ born into a traditionally army family. It could never be an easy alliance. But the arrival of a hostile fleet‚ larger‚ far more skilful and more powerful than any Atticus has encountered before‚ forces them to act together. So Atticus‚ one of Rome′s few experienced sailors‚ finds himself propelled into the middle of a political struggle that is completely foreign to him. Rome need to build a navy fast but the obstacles are many; political animosities‚ legions adamant that they will only use their traditional methods; Roman prejudice even from friends‚ that all those not born in Rome are inferior citizens. The enemy are first class‚ experienced and determined to control the seas. Can Atticus‚ and the fledgling Roman navy‚ staffed with inexperienced sailors and unwilling legionaries‚ out−wit and out−fight his opponents.

Ship of Rome - Harper Collins, 2009

Book of the week and Bibliography - Vikas Swarup, Q & A

Its been quite and while, but with a new year comes a new start. The last couple of months of 2008 were incredibly busy, with little time for reading and even less for blogs. However, I will do my best to prioritise the blog this year and to keep my sugggestions flowing. A number of last year's recommendations have done very well, and in particular three have won their catagories in the Costa Book Awards - First Novel to Sadie Jones for The Outcast, Novel to Sebastian Barry for The Secret Scripture and Poetry to Adam Foulds for The Broken Sword. I may never do so well again!

In the spirit of looking back, this week's selection is a first novel from 2005 which is receiving renewed publicity. Q & A by Vikas Swarup is the basis for the newly released film Slumdog Millionaire. The novel received excellent reviews when released. It was shortlisted for the Best First Book by the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and won South Africa’s Exclusive Books Boeke Prize 2006, as well as the Prix Grand Public at the 2007 Paris Book Fair. A BBC radio play based on the book won the Gold Award for Best Drama at the Sony Radio Academy Awards 2008 and the IVCA Clarion Award 2008. If the film does well in the Oscars, the book may well become more collectable. First editions of the Doubleday hardcover are uncommon, particularly signed, but there are a couple online in the £20 - 30 range.

Bibliography

Q&A - Doubleday, 2005

Six Suspects - Doubleday, 2008

Book of the Week - Peter Grimsdale, Perfect Night

Perfect Night is a debut thriller by Peter Grimsdale which has received good reviews. After joining the BBC in 1980, Grimsdale became editor of Crimewatch and produced documentaries on a range of subjects including the Tamil uprising in Sri Lanka. In 1994 he became Channel 4's Commissioning Editor for Features and Religion, winning Royal Television Society Awards in both genres, before returning to the BBC in 1999 as Head of the Independent Commissioning Group, responsible for all of the BBC's independent programming. In 2000 He was back commissioning at Channel 4 where among other things he took charge of Big Brother. In 2004 he moved to the internet as Editorial Director for Yahoo Europe, where he overhauled all that portal's content operations, and then returned to television a year later as Controller for Science for Channel Five.

When ambitious young documentary film-maker Nick witnesses the death of a notorious arms dealer in Sri Lanka, he's lucky to escape with his own life. He was on his way to interview him on his yacht when it was blown to smithereens. But the head injuries he receives destroy his memory - and his burgeoning career. Years later, working as a film archivist, he uncovers an image in a forgotten reel of film that seems to totally rewrite the incident that derailed his life. But as he starts to search for the other pieces of the puzzle, he quickly realizes that this single, explosive piece of film could destroy him all over again. Soon he's on the run from people who want the lid put very firmly back on the past. His only option is to restore his memory - however painful it turns out to be - and find the whole truth before it kills him.

Man Booker Prize - the most difficult novels

As announced earlier in the week, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga won the man Booker Prize. The announcement seems to have been greeted mainly with surprise. Nonetheless, as I noted back in May, first novels set in India have done very well in the prize in recent years. The White Tiger is widely available as a first edition. Prices are currently rather high, but if you are prepared to wait for a while they will undoubtedly fall again once the initial excitement is over, as this is not an uncommon book.

The Clothes on their Backs looks destined to join the list of the most difficult to obtain Booker novels from a collector’s perspective. I have assembled over quite a few years a full collection of the winners and shortlisted books. The ones I found most difficult to obtain in the UK first edition were the following:

1) Gordon M.Williams, Scenes like these. Secker and Warburg, 1968. An exceptionally uncommon book - none available online at the moment. Paradoxically, may be cheap if encountered. I have two copies, each of which cost under ten pounds. However, many collectors would pay much more.
2) TH Wheeler, The Conjunction, Angus and Robertson, 1969. Again, exceptionally uncommon in the original first edition, with no copies available online at present.
3) JL Carr, A month in the country, The Harvester Press, 1980. The first edition is currently unavailable online, although reprrints are relatively common.
4) Stanley Middleton, Holiday, Hutchinson, 1974. The 1974 winner eluded me for several years. However, there are now several copies available via ABEBooks, albeit at a minimum cost of £1000!
5) Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop, Duckworth, 1978. Shortlisted in 1978, a small print run went mainly to libraries. Again available via ABEBooks, at £300 or ablve.
6) Keri Hulme, The Bone People, 1985. Probably the most surprising winner over the years, and complicated from a bibliographical perspective. The true First British Edition of this Booker Prize winning novel is distinguished on the title page by the statement: 'Spiral in association with Hodder and Stoughton Auckland, London, Sydney, Toronto'. Typeset in Christchurch, New Zealand; printed and bound in Singapore. In format it is slightly larger and thicker than the later Spiral/ Hodder impression which appears to be a first edition but unlike the true first edition also has the “Shortlisted for the Booker Prize” on the dustjacket.

Book of the week and bibliography - Zoe Heller, The Believers

The Believers is the third novel from Zoe Heller - it seems likely to feature in prize lists later in the year. Heller was born in London in 1965 and educated at Oxford University and Columbia University, New York. She is a journalist who, after writing book reviews for various newspapers, became a feature writer for The Independent. She wrote a weekly confessional column for the Sunday Times for four years, and subsequently wrote for the Daily Telegraph, winning the title 'Columnist of the Year' in 2002. She is the author of two novels: Everything You Know (2000), a dark comedy about misanthropic writer Willy Miller, and Notes on a Scandal (2003) which tells the story of an affair between a high school teacher and her student through the eyes of the teacher's supposed friend, Barbara Covett. It was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize for fiction, and subsequently released as a feature film, starring Cate Blanchett and Dame Judi Dench. Zoe Heller lives in New York.

When New York radical lawyer Joel Litvinoff falls gravely ill, his wife Audrey uncovers a secret that forces her to re-examine both her belief in him and her commitment to their forty-year marriage. Meanwhile, her adopted son Lenny is back on drugs again and her daughters, Karla and Rosa, are grappling with their own catastrophes and dilemmas. Rosa, a disillusioned revolutionary socialist, has found herself increasingly beguiled by the world of Orthodox Judaism; now she is being pressed to make a commitment and must decide if she is really ready to forsake all her cherished secular values for a Torah-observant life. Karla, an unhappily married hospital social worker and union activist, falls into a tumultuous affair with a conservative shop-keeper: can she really love a man whose politics she reviles? And how to choose between a life of duty and principle and her own happiness?

Bibliography

Everything you know (Viking, 2000)

Notes on a scandal (Viking, 2003)

The Believers (Fig Tree, 2008)