The Costa Book Award Winner Has Been Announced!

Formally known as the Whitbread Prize, the Costa Book Award rewards authors who write something that we readers enjoy reading.  Hmm...well, maybe there's more to the prize than that; you can check out the Costa Prize site here.  There are five winners, each in a different category: First Novel, Novel, Biography, Children's Literature, and Poetry (see the other category winners below).  Then, from those five winners, a super-duper winner is chosen as the Costa Book Award Winner of the Year.

Congratulations to Nathan Filer, who has won the award for his debut novel The Shock of the Fall, a "moving account of schizophrenia and grief." (Click here for more from the Guardian article.)  Filer is a nurse working in the mental health system in the UK, so I am intrigued to read this insider's account, albeit fictional.

I have already requested the book from my local library...stay tuned for more.  Oh, and it beat the other contenders:

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
The Pike by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse by Chris Riddell
Drysalter, a poetry collection by Michael Symmons Roberts

Happy Reading!