Costa Book of the Year Award

In case you missed it this week, Nathan Filer, a first-time author, has run away with the Costa Book of the Year Award with his novel The Shock of the Fall.   In some ways, this book brings to mind The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time which was related by a boy suffering apparently from either autism or aspergers.   Here the story is told by a schizophrenic boy coming of age but haunted by the memory of his dead older brother.   According to Rose Tremain, one of the judges, she and her fellow judges 'were particularly struck by the perfect alignment between the story and the voice in which it is told'.   It certainly must be a powerful novel as it overcame strong competition from Kate Atkinson's Life After Life and Lucy Hughes-Hallett's The Pike, a biography of the Italian poet and progenitor of fascism, Gabriele D'Annunzio which has already won the Samuel Johnson award for non-fiction -  both of which were tipped as likely winners.