Costa Shortlists Announced

As a sort of finger exercise for the big announcement of the National Book Award winners this evening, here are the shortlists for the UK's Costa Book Awards (formerly known as the Whitbreads). They don't have the same profile over here that the Booker does, but they're a big deal at home--possibly second in influence over there. The five category winners will be announced on January 6, and, in the Costas' particular spin on the process, from those winners a "Book of the Year" (which should be known as the Apples and Oranges Prize) will be chosen on January 27.

Only one overlap with the Booker shortlist (The Secret Scripture)--and only one more overlap with the Booker longlist (Child 44, on the debut novel list). The most interesting pick for me is Diana Athill's Somewhere Towards the End. She's a legendary (there's that word again) editor who has turned to memoir in her later years--I really enjoyed her modest and blunt Stet and Instead of a Letter. And now it looks like she's writing with a characteristic lack of sentiment about very old age--she's in her 90s. Here's part of what PW had to say:

She is bluntly unconcerned with conventional wisdom, unapologetically recounting her extended role as the Other Woman in her companion's prior marriage—then explaining how he didn't move in with her until after they'd stopped having sex, which is why it was no big deal for her to invite his next mistress to move in with them to save expenses. She is equally frank in discussing how, as their life turns sad and boring, she copes with his declining health, just as she cared for her mother in her final years. Firmly resolute that no afterlife awaits her, Athill finds just enough optimism in this world to keep her reflections from slipping into morbidity—she may not offer much comfort, but it's a bracing read.

The full shortlists:

Novel:

• The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
• The Other Hand by Chris Cleave (only available in UK right now--the reviews for this look really good!)
• A Partisan's Daughter by Louis de Bernieres
• Trauma by Patrick McGrath

First Novel:

• The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams
• The Outcast by Sadie Jones
• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
• Inside the Whale by Jennie Rooney

Biography:

• Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill
• Bloomsbury Ballerina by Judith Mackrell
• If You Don't Know Me By Now by Sathnam Sanghera
• Chagall by Jackie Wullschlager

Poetry:

• For All We Know by Ciaran Carson
• The Broken Word by Adam Foulds
• Sunday at the Skin Launderette by Kathryn Simmonds
• Salvation Jane by Greta Stoddart

Childrens:

• Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray
• The Carbon Diaries by Saci Lloyd
• Just Henry by Michelle Magorian
• Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine

See our list of previous Costa/Whitbread winners. --Tom