Awards Season! Part 2

Here's the second batch of virtual awards, made by our contributors to a book of their choice. Thanks to all our reviewers for giving us such great recommendations! Come back next week for the final part.

Yvonne Coppard: The Evie Award for best unreliable narrator goes to Notes on a Scandal  by Zoe Heller.  Barbara is a frumpish, unpopular history teacher whom nobody warms to. Sheba, the new new pottery teacher, is the opposite: a charismatic free spirit who seems to have it all. When Sheba starts a sexual relationship with a pupil, Barbara becomes her confidante.

The depth of Barbara’s sexual repression, jealousy and malice, hidden from the world and from herself, is revealed only to the reader in this gripping, masterly novel. Shortlisted for the Booker, it’s up there with Lolita and The Great Gatsby.

Amanda Craig awards the Craig Cup for Most Underrated Children's Book to: Philip Womack's Wildlord. It's one of a clutch of recent new YA titles about the intersection between the mortal world and supernatural beings that readers will recognise as the fiercer kind of fairy.

In the English and Celtic tradition, proper fairies aren't twee and pretty, but unpredictable, frightening, mischievous and even dangerous manifestations of nature; and these stories often also address mankind's selfish destructiveness of the natural world, and the possible revenge of it upon us.

This is Womack's eighth novel, and one with a propulsive plot, a sympathetically vulnerable hero and an evocative style. Most of all, it has a moral centre about the importance of love and trust. This story, with its universal appeal ,deserves a wider audience.

Anne Cassidy: A Book I read Again and Again - awarded to Kate Atkinson for Case Histories.  I read a lot of crime. Every couple of years I feel the need to revisit this almost perfect book. It's a crime novel that foregrounds the stories of the families of victims. This wasn’t a whodunnit but more an examination of the devastation caused by murder and loss. The examination of family life before and after the crimes is knife edge and utterly believable. The focus is on three unsolved murders and then we meet Jackson Brodie, the ex-cop, the damaged hero, who seems to blunder his way through the terrain to find the killers, to bring peace to the loved ones. There are bits of this book that I unashamedly cry at every time. A terrific crime story. Can’t wait until I read it next time!

The Celia Rees Award for Most Influential Children's Fantasy Novel goes to: The Box of Delights.

John Masefield's novel, published in 1935, is exactly that - a box of delights. It contains themes, characters and motifs that occur again and again in British children's fantasy fiction: shapeshifting, time travelling, a young protagonist on the cusp of adolescence singled out as having special powers, a wise old magician, a magical object that must be guarded at all cost, an epic battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, an evil, cunning and ruthless enemy and his equally unpleasant female companion, a midwinter setting with extreme weather, the timely intervention of mythical figures from British folklore - it's all there!

Katie Fforde gives The Fforde Award for the book she didn't expect to fall in love with to The Dictionary of Lost Words, by Pip Williams. Quirky, imaginative and beautifully written, this is for people who love words, who are feminists in the very best sense. It’s about a little girl who is the daughter of a man among a team of many who are writing the dictionary. She discovers that some words are considered to be no longer useful. They are often words to do with women. We follow her life and the life of the dictionary and others involved in its creation. Highly recommended.

Adèle Geras' prize is the Snowglobe Award for the Best Short Book which Creates an Entire World, and the first winner is Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These.

A few days ago, I found a book which is as close to perfection as any I've read all year. It's tiny: a mere 75 pages and I read it in two sittings. I could have read it in one, but needed to think about it. It's the most extraordinarily beautifully- written tale, which encompasses huge themes and enormous emotions and manages to take you to the heart of a family in a specific place and time. Bill Furlong is a coal merchant in a small Irish town. He and his wife have six daughters. It's Christmas Eve, and the day before that. By the end, we are part of this town. I felt as if I'd been handed the most beautiful snowglobe, even though this place has darkness deep within it. A worthy winner of my award.

Sue Purkiss awards the Purkiss Prize for a book (actually a whole series) that brings comfort - to the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny. 

Life’s a bit on the tough side at the moment, isn’t it? Of course, there are lots of good things too – but sometimes they threaten to be overwhelmed by the bad stuff.

The Inspector Gamache series offers a retreat from all this. Three Pines, where the books are mostly set, is a tiny village in the forest in Quebec. It’s not on any map, it doesn’t show up on a satnav: it’s a refuge. It’s peopled by eccentrics: Ruth, the mad old poet, Gabri and Olivier, who run the bistro and the B&B, Clara the artist – and eventually, Inspector Gamache himself, who is strong, clever, kind and incorruptible.

The characters are complex and satisfying, the stories are gripping – and the food! Ah, if only I had time to tell you about the food… Plus, there are seventeen books in the series.

John Newman of Newham Bookshop awards Newman’s Page Turner of the Year or A Reason to Remain to Sarah Winman.

Everybody loves a feel-good book and this year we really needed stories which celebrate friendship and the ties that bind. Sarah Winman gave us a real gift in the shape of  Still Life and I want to both celebrate it and of course unconditionally recommend it to you all. Spanning several decades of the last century we encounter lives interlinked by war, tragedy and change. Its roots are in London's East End but the core and real heart of it is very much centred in Italy and most especially the city of Florence which the author clearly loves. The big themes of the novel are addressed with a light touch via suitably diverse characters you quickly care about and leave behind with reluctance. This was my page turner of the year and one I felt privileged and confident to place in the hands of other like-minded souls.