Awards Season! Part 1.

Something different for our end-of-year round-ups -we've invited our reviewers to give a virtual award to a book of their choice. Whether it's a book that's surprised them, a book they didn't expect to enjoy, a book that made them laugh or cry - here's what they've chosen in the first of three posts. Come back next week for more.

As always, we're immensely grateful to our contributors for giving their time, energy and insights to Writers Review. It wouldn't happen without them!

Tamsin Rosewell of Kenilworth Books: The Sheepish Bookseller Award for the Book I Didn't Think I'd Like But I Totally Adored, And Now Can't Stop Talking About It.

And I'd like to award it to Cecily by Annie Garthwaite.

When I read the first reviews, they compared it to Hilary Mantel. Like many booksellers I greeted this with an eye roll and a sinking feeling. I was expecting something perhaps over-indulgent; an.. er.. insufficiently edited draught-excluder of a book. But I should have ignored that reviewer, Mantel isn't a patch on Annie Garthwaite. I loved every word of Cecily, and thought it was one of the most astonishing books I've read in a decade. I was rooting for Cecily (and marvelling at Annie's ability as a writer) every moment. Far from being indulgent, it was beautifully, intelligently written - and the reader never forgotten. Annie Garthwaite's knowledge of history is deep, and her passion for her characters is infectious. She wears her love for Cecily like a crown of flowers. Off that throne Hilary!

Jonty Driver: I have two profound reasons to regard Arthur Koestler's novel Darkness at Noon as important in my life. I read it when I was 17 and still at school in South Africa, by then profoundly bored by much of the teaching provided. I had never been a racist but was beginning to be politically aware. so, when I went to the University of Cape Town the next year, because of the novel I was intellectually armed against attempts to divert me from my instinctive liberalism to hard-line Marxism (the South African Communist Party, though it was totally illegal and underground, Stalinist in demeanour, still worked hard to recruit students). Secondly, when I was detained by the security police, five years later, in solitary confinement under the "Ninety Day Detention" regulations, knowing what happened to Rubashov (the central character in Darkness at Noon) in solitary helped me cope better than I might otherwise have done. In particular, the "knocking code", described in that novel, enabled a friend detained in the same police station to give me the name of the person who had told the police I was involved in the African Resistance Movement, the ostensible reason for my detention; I wasn't in the ARM and actually thought it mistaken in its actions, although some of my closest friends were involved. In fact, the real reason for my detention was the work I had done as President of the non-racial and anti-apartheid National Union of South African Students.

Rachel Ward's Award for the Book I Wish I'd Written goes to We Begin at the End  by Chris Whitaker. I took a while to get into this book but then I was hooked. It’s a masterpiece in characterisation and plotting, and also how to break a reader’s heart into a million tiny pieces. I wish I’d written it, but - that being impossible - it has spurred me on to be a better writer.

Pippa Goodhart: I present the Goodhart Award for the most good-hearted book of 2021 to …drum-roll... A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson.

This gloriously quiet, beautiful, elegant story takes three deeply troubled and alone characters in a small town in Canada, marooned in winter coldness, and brings warmth. The seven year old child, the middle aged man, the old woman, are all trapped by mistakes made by themselves and others. But this kind book lets them come unexpectedly to each other’s aid, enabling them each to move on. Truly a story that does good to the heart and soul of the reader! Happy Christmas!

Linda Sargent awards Sargent's Sash to Old Age: A Journey into Simplicity by Helen M. Luke.

I was recently recalled this collection of essays when I recommended it to a younger friend who remarked that they were finding the ageing process trickier than they had anticipated. I first read it over twenty years ago when it was recommended to me by an older friend. I was middle aged then and found it inspiring and optimistic; a book about growth and creativity and, not, as some might imagine, decay and involuntarily loss. I returned to it often. In five chapters this wise Jungian writer insightfully references The Odyssey, King Lear, The Tempest and Little Gidding, with a final chapter on Suffering, revealing how ageing can, if we allow it, be an act of letting go of the familiar and of gaining through this process; learning that there are new things to explore and new levels of understanding to aspire to both in ourselves and in others.

Julia Jarman's Best Book You May Never Have Heard of Prize:  I first read this novel in hardback, called Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook. I loved it from intriguing first page to satisfying last, mostly because I loved the heroic, cookery-teacher turned spy, Miss Graham herself, and her fellow spies, brave women all, and the thrilling plot. It took me to painful places – the worst of Nazi evils – but these characters, based on real-life people who fought for justice lifted my spirits, and not just mine. There are 630 positive reviews on Amazon. My book group loved it, but why they asked, was this brilliant author not on the airwaves talking about this book like the famous author with a spy story out that month. Why weren’t there adverts all over the place as there were for the famous author? Because publishers don’t advertise your books till they don’t need advertising, I explained, but they didn’t get it. Nor do I.

Berlie Doherty: I award the Berlie Bouquet to Katherine Towers for her poetry pamphlet The Violin Forest, (2019 Happenstance Press).

The twenty short poems of The Violin Forest sing with lyrical imagery and musical grace. Her collection introduced me to W.S Graham – after reading his Imagine a Forest I returned to her poem Good Words Take from a river any thought of endlessness/or death to find it’s only water in its way.

I listened to Sibelius before re-reading Silence of Jarvenpaa, and wondered about his wife and daughters in the house where more than enough time did he spend looking up at the sky. To La Gaviota by Rodriguez …’the tenor’s airy triplets/ made me picture ghosts. To Schumann’s beautiful Gesaenge der Fruehe … you’ll hear dawn break/like the bones in a hand.

The poems are not all esoteric. One of the most accessible, Sparrows, contains my favourite image our old wisteria is a billowing palace/ of many green and lilac rooms..

The Book That Confirms Something Important Prize is awarded by Cynthia Jefferies to Alive Alive Oh! And Other Things That Matter by Diana Athill

 Diana Athill wrote more than one book about getting, or being, old. The other I love is Somewhere Towards the End, which turned out not to have been so very near the end because after winning the Costa for it she went on for another 11 years, publishing four more before she died in 2019 at the age of 101.

 These books are straight and honest, often amusing and also gracefully profound, These are not books of advice, but they are books of truth, and about how she lived her life. Somehow, in reading her I realise how many thoughts and feelings I share with her. Perhaps it is something to do with getting old that makes memories that float out of the past (to use her phrase) so very pleasurable to recall. 

I defy you not to be amused, moved and instructed, simply by reading the introduction. Yes, I recognise her thoughts about men, and think of Venice, and now remember, because she says it so certainly, and I hope you will remember it too, that looking at things is never time wasted. 

More virtual awards will be announced next Monday!