Tonight:
5°c
This year's Costa Book Awards look even more of a lottery than usual. No matter how deserving Diana Athill is of the biography award for her memoir Somewhere Towards the End, it is bizarre to say the least that Patrick French's authorised life of VS Naipaul didn't even make the shortlist. It was generally regarded by the critics as one of the best biographies of the year. Hey, but what do critics know?
Posh bingo is how Julian Barnes described the Booker. The same is true of the Costa. Yet you could argue the Costa has done itself proud by honouring Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture with the Best Novel award. Many thought Barry, not Aravind Adiga, should have won last year's Booker.
If objectivity is really the purpose of literary prizes, then we would have the same judges each year. Can you recall the last occasion judges didn't hand out a prize because they thought no book was worthy of the honour? However, the sponsors know what makes headlines: the unexpected news angle and a smattering of celebrity panellists. When I judged the Costa First Novel last year I had no idea that we had chosen the first all-female debut novelist shortlist in 36 years. But that was the story cleverly contrived and spun to the press.
This year we are told 91-year-old Athill has become the oldest winner in Costa's history. How long before the public just gives a shrug of indifference?
* The global downturn is affecting even high-class escort girls. And how. Shortly before Christmas an international lawyer found himself being propositioned by two Russian girls. Bart Hellyer was having a drink with a business colleague in Claridge's when the Russian pair tried it on. Hellyer, a racehorse owner and breeder, was not tempted but was surprised to be approached. Why? Because he's been in a wheelchair since a riding accident in 1971. “Besides, I had a law dinner to go to at Claridge's, then a long journey home,” he says.
* The Reader, starring Kate Winslet, may or may not be a good film but it testifies to the enduring appeal of the Second World War as fertile ground for storytelling. But believe me, you ain't seen nothing yet. This spring sees the British publication of Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones, an epic 1,000-page novel about the life of an SS officer. It has already won the Prix Goncourt and the Prix de Littérature in France. The French have never faced up to their own collaborationist role during the 1940s; honouring a piece of fiction by Littell, an American Francophone, strikes me as just another form of evasion.
