LONDON – The latest odds from bookmakers William Hill (www.williamhill.com) have novelist Ali Smith, winner of the Costa Novel Award, as odds-on favourite for the Costa Book of the Year with How to be both, a novel about art’s versatility that pairs parallel narratives of a teenage girl and a 15th-century Renaissance artist, at 6-4.
In second place is writer Helen Macdonald, winner of the Costa Biography Award, with H is for Hawk; part memoir, part nature book, it is her personal account of training a goshawk as a way of dealing with grief following her father’s death – at 3-1. Hilary Spurling was the last author to win the Book of the Year with a biography in 2005 for Matisse: the Master.
Closely behind in third place is debut author Emma Healey, winner of the Costa First Novel Award, for Elizabeth is Missing, at 4-1. In fourth place is author and journalist Kate Saunders, at 5-1, winner of the Costa Children’s Book Award for Five Children on the Western Front, a moving sequel to E Nesbit’s Five Children and It that transplants the main characters into the trenches of World War I.
Welsh poet and teacher Jonathan Edwards is currently placed fifth, at 6-1, for his debut collection My Family and Other Superheroes which the judges called ‘joyous and brilliant’.
The odds are:
Ali Smith, How to be both 6/4
Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk 3/1
Emma Healey, Elizabeth is Missing 4/1
Kate Saunders, Five Children on the Western Front 5/1
Jonathan Edwards, My Family and Other Superheroes 6/1
The Costa Book Awards is the only major UK book prize that is open solely to authors resident in the UK and Ireland and also, uniquely, recognises the most enjoyable books across five categories – First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book – published in the last year.
Originally established in 1971 by Whitbread Plc, Costa announced its takeover of the sponsorship of the UK’s most prestigious book prize in 2006. 2014 marks the 43rd year of the Book Awards.
The five Costa Book Award winners, each of whom will receive £5,000, were selected from 640 entries. The five books are now eligible for the ultimate prize, the 2014 Costa Book of the Year, worth a further £30,000.
The 2014 Costa Book of the Year winner will be announced at an awards ceremony at Quaglino’s in central London on Tuesday 27th January 2015 by a panel of judges chaired by author Robert Harris and including actresses Dame Diana Rigg and Samantha Bond and BBC Economics Editor, Robert Peston. The winner of the Costa Short Story Award, voted for by the public, will also be announced that evening.
