Is the Costa book of the year poised to go to a poetry collection for the third year running?
Costa contender? Carol Ann Duffy. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
Last year's rumpus over the Booker long- and shortlists has left the Costa prize to claim a high ground which it has in the past been at pains to avoid. Robert McCrum wrote on Sunday about the "uncool oddness" of the prize, which is now in its 41st year. "More populist than Man Booker, but not as cool as Orange," he said, "it still hasn't outgrown its parochial, ale‑house origins as the Whitbread prize".
This may be an accurate summary of the prize's reputation, but it doesn't take account of its recent history. The overall prize has been taken by a poetry collection for two years in a row. Poetry usually does badly in generalist prizes and there's no question that part of the appeal of both collections lies in the autobiographical stories they tell – Christopher Reid's A Scattering was about the death of his wife, while Jo Shapcott's Of Mutability dealt with her treatment for breast cancer. But when the two leading contenders for this year's prize – Carol Ann Duffy's collection The Bees and Matthew Hollis's biography of poet Edward Thomas, Now All Roads Lead to France – also involve poetry, something is clearly going in.
Like Reid's winning volume, The Bees deals with personal loss – in this case, the death of Duffy's mother. It's a timely and elegantly patterned collection and would, I think, make a fine winner, were it not for the pressure against the prize going to poetry three times in a row, a pressure that may militate indirectly against Hollis's biography of Edward Thomas, too.
So who will take it? Having seen Anthony McGowan's Guardian review of Blood Red Road, I'm inclined to discount this children's book winner as a serious contender, and Christie Watson's Tiny Sunbirds Far Away hasn't so far shown the form one would expect from a first novel that also deserves to be named book of the year. This leaves Andrew Miller's Pure, a novel of the French revolution which didn't figure at all on any of last year's other prizes, but which comes from a writer of considerable pedigree to whom few would bregrudge an award. Now where have I heard that before?
This may be an accurate summary of the prize's reputation, but it doesn't take account of its recent history. The overall prize has been taken by a poetry collection for two years in a row. Poetry usually does badly in generalist prizes and there's no question that part of the appeal of both collections lies in the autobiographical stories they tell – Christopher Reid's A Scattering was about the death of his wife, while Jo Shapcott's Of Mutability dealt with her treatment for breast cancer. But when the two leading contenders for this year's prize – Carol Ann Duffy's collection The Bees and Matthew Hollis's biography of poet Edward Thomas, Now All Roads Lead to France – also involve poetry, something is clearly going in.
Like Reid's winning volume, The Bees deals with personal loss – in this case, the death of Duffy's mother. It's a timely and elegantly patterned collection and would, I think, make a fine winner, were it not for the pressure against the prize going to poetry three times in a row, a pressure that may militate indirectly against Hollis's biography of Edward Thomas, too.
So who will take it? Having seen Anthony McGowan's Guardian review of Blood Red Road, I'm inclined to discount this children's book winner as a serious contender, and Christie Watson's Tiny Sunbirds Far Away hasn't so far shown the form one would expect from a first novel that also deserves to be named book of the year. This leaves Andrew Miller's Pure, a novel of the French revolution which didn't figure at all on any of last year's other prizes, but which comes from a writer of considerable pedigree to whom few would bregrudge an award. Now where have I heard that before?