Annal:2007 Costa Book Award for First Novel

What Was Lost

Catherine O'Flynn

• 2007 Costa-1st Novel winner
• Score: 10.57

It is the 1980s, and Kate Meaney is a serious-minded and curious young girl—who spends her time with her toy monkey acting out the role of a junior detective. She notes goings-on at the Green Oaks shopping centre and in her street, particularly the newsagent’s where she is friends with the owner’s son Adrian. When she disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion and is hounded by the press.

It’s 2004 and thirty-something Lisa is at work in a cut-price record store, tearing her hair out at customers’ bizarre requests and the even more bizarre behaviour of her colleagues. While at home, the futility of her relationship is slowly becoming apparent. Over shared fishpaste sandwiches, she strikes up a friendship with security guard Kurt—and, following CCTV glimpses of Kate, they become entranced by the lost little girl and her connections with the strange history of Green Oaks itself.

Gifted

Nikita Lalwani

• 2007 Costa-1st Novel shortlist
• Score: 6.57

Numbers have filled Rumi Vasi’s world since she first learned to count. But it was on a trip to India at the age of 8 that her mathematical powers acquired their almost supernatural significance. When she returned home to Cardiff her destiny was sealed: she was now, and would forever be, the town’s ‘maths prodigy’.

At 14 Rumi is firmly set on the path of a gifted child, speeding headlong towards Oxford University. As her father sees it, discipline is everything if the family has any hope of making its mark on its adoptive country. However, as Rumi gets older and the family’s stark isolation intensifies, numbers start to lose their magic for the young teenager: she abandons the rigid timetable of her afternoons to seek out friendship and replaces equations with rampant spice abuse. As her longing for love and her parents’ will to succeed deepen so too does the rift between generations.

A Golden Age

Tahmima Anam

• 2007 Costa-1st Novel shortlist
• Score: 6.57

As young widow Rehana Haque awakes one March morning, she might be forgiven for feeling happy. Today she will throw a party for her son and daughter. In the garden of the house she has built, her roses are blooming, her children are almost grown, and beyond their doorstep, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. Change is in the air.

But none of the guests at Rehana’s party can foresee what will happen in the days and months ahead. For this is 1971 in East Pakistan, a country on the brink of war. And this family’s life is about to change forever.

Mosquito

Roma Tearne

• 2008 Kiriyama-Fiction finalist
• 2007 Costa-1st Novel shortlist
• Score: 12.58

When Theo returns to his native Sri Lanka after his wife’s death, he hopes to escape his loss amidst the lush landscape of his increasingly war-torn country. But as he gives himself up to life in his beautiful, tortured land, he finds himself slipping into friendship with an artistic young girl, Nulani—a friendship that blossoms into love. Under the threat of civil war, as the quiet coastal town fills with whispers and suspicions, their affair offers a glimmer of hope to a country on the brink of destruction.

But all too soon, the violence that casts an ominous shadow over their love explodes. No-one, it seems, is safe; only the sea and the land remain breathtakingly lovely. As the country descends into a morass of violence and hatred, the tragedy of civil conflict spreads like a poison among friends and lovers sickened by the face of war. Ultimately, each of them will be tested in the most terrible ways…