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A.L. Kennedy Wins Costa Book Award

by Zoe Strimpel
Thu, 24 Jan 2008 at 1:17 PM

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The famously morose Scottish author and comedian Alison "A.L." Kennedy won one of the UK's top literary prizes on Tuesday night, having been the favorite to win since the contenders were announced at the beginning of the month. Winners of the Costa Book of the Year Award (formerly and more famously the Whitbread) are first named winners of individual categories — biography, children's book, novel, first novel, and poetry collection, each of which carries a nearly $10,000 prize — a month before the ceremony. The winner on the night gets an additional $49,000 and the overall book of the year award.

This year, the top prize was presented to Ms. Kennedy for her post-World War II novel, "Day." Like its author, the book is hardly a barrel of laughs — its subject is the psychological fracturing of a former tail gunner called Alfred Day, who badly misses his time with the Lancaster Bombers. In a bid to chase down demons from his stint in Germany, Day returns to the country as an extra in a POW movie.

Ms. Kennedy's acceptance speech included such uplifting gems as "I work all the time. I don't have a family. I live quite inexpensively" — a comment made in reference to the difficult climate for writers at present. "If you genuinely care about reading and books, defend them," she also told the assembled crowd of editors, publishers, and assorted other literati.

In keeping with the trend toward glamorous judging panels (this year's Orange Prize judges include pop singer Lily Allen, and last year the Costas jury included the model Erin O'Connor), Joanna Trollope was the chairwoman of the Costas, with Alex James of the band Blur, GQ editor Dylan Jones, and the BBC news presenter Emily Maitlis among her underlings. Of "Day," which is Ms. Kennedy's fifth novel, Ms. Trollope said: "It is perfectly beautifully written, it's got shadows of James Joyce in it. She's an extraordinary writer. It's not gloomy in that it's not without hope. I wouldn't recommend it obviously to a profoundly clinically depressed person. You need to work at it a bit."

The jury had been deeply divided on the winner, only deciding 5 to 3 on "Day" after a two-hour session. The runner-up was "What Was Lost," the first novel of Catherine O'Flynn, a former postal worker. The book, about a girl who goes missing in a shopping complex, was rejected by 15 publishers before finding a bite at Tindal Street Press.

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