Congratulations to our book-award winnersBelinda McKeon and Anna Carey, two regular reviewers on these pages, were winners at the Bord Gáis Energy Book Awards on Thursday.
McKeon was named best newcomer for her novel Solace. Carey's The Real Rebeccawon in the young-adult fiction category. Other winners on the night – a glamorous black-tie affair at the RDS – were Neil Jordan, for Mistaken, which was named Irish novel of the year, Alan Glynn, whose Bloodlandpicked up the crime-fiction prize, and All for You, by Sheila O'Flanagan, which won the popular-fiction award. How to Be a Woman, by Caitlin Moran; Easy Meals, by Rachel Allen; Inside the Peloton, by Nicolas Roche; Connemara: A Little Gaelic Kingdom, by Tim Robinson; and The Lonely Beast, by Chris Judge, picked up awards in their categories. Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney was presented with the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award by President Michael D Higgins for his contribution to Irish literature over the past six decades. The awards will be screened on RTÉ next Thursday. The public vote – which decides the winners – was a huge 32,000.
Irish interest in big industry prizes
Some awards, notably the Dylan Thomas Prize, pass mostly under the radar despite their prestige within the book world and the prize money that comes with them. Belfast-born Lucy Caldwell is this year's winner for her novel The Meeting Point.It's the story of a Christian minister and his wife moving to Bahrain and becoming caught up in a web of emotional and religious complexities. The award is to encourage creative talent in English-language writers under 30, from any genre. A shortlist for a much noisier prize, the Costa Book Awards (same money, incidentally), was announced this week, with Kevin Barry the only Irish writer in with a shout. His novel, City of Bohane, is shortlisted for the debut-novel award. It has already been optioned by Parallel Films.
Publisher opens heart and wallet to Maher
Publishers are always complaining about lack of funds – they were at it long before the recession – but when a good book comes their way, money, it seems, can be found. The Dublin-born journalist Kevin Maher, who writes for the London Times, was in the happy position of seeing his first novel, The Fields, become the subject of a four-way bidding war, and it has now been bought by Little, Brown for what his agent James Gill at United Agents says is a "good five-figure sum". Set in the 1980s, it is narrated by a Dublin boy who runs away to London with his much older girlfriend. Gill calls it "clever and very funny", and it's set for publication in 2013.
Prize proves Máire has her art down to a tSaoi
One of our most distinguished poets, Máire Mhac an tSaoi (above), is this year's winner of the adult section of the Irish Language Book of the Year Award. She won for her book Scéal Ghearóid Iarla, a historic account of Garret FitzGerald, the third earl of Desmond (1335-1398). There was tremendous excitement and an outpouring of warmth and good wishes at the National Library on Tuesday when the awards were given out, largely because the poet braved the November weather to attend. At nearly 90, she makes our poet president seem like a broth of a boy.
