books

Ali Smith’s ‘How to be Both’ takes Costa novel award

January 06, 2015

Scottish writer Ali Smith's inventive "How to be Both", which is divided into two parts, each starting with a different character, was named as the winner in the novel category on Monday for Britain's 2014 Costa Book Awards.

Smith's critically acclaimed novel, which also was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, contains the twin stories of George and Franchescho, one a 1960s teenager, the other a young artist in 15th-century Ferrara, which can be read in either order.

A winner of the same award in 2005 for "The Accidental", Smith's novel will contend with four other books for the main Costa Book of the Year award, to be announced on Jan. 27.

The other category winners are as follows:

– Emma Healey, the First Novel Award for "Elizabeth is Missing", narrated by an elderly woman who is suffering from dementia.

– Helen Macdonald, the Biography Award for "H is for Hawk", a personal account of her efforts to train a goshawk as a way to cope with grief after her father's death.

– Welsh poet and teacher Jonathan Edwards, the Poetry Award for his debut collection "My Family and Other Superheroes".

– Author and journalist Kate Saunders, the Children's Book Award for "Five Children on the Western Front", set during World War One.

The five Costa Book Award winners, each of whom will receive 5,000 pounds (RM27,130), were selected from 640 entries.

Since the introduction of the Book of the Year award in 1985, it has been won 11 times by a novel, five times by a first novel, five times by a biography, seven times by a collection of poetry and once by a children's book.

The Costa Book Awards is the only major British book prize that is open solely to authors resident in the United Kingdom and Ireland. – Reuters, January 6, 2015.