Drum roll please ... the category shortlists of the Costa book awards have been announced. No doubt you're all now thinking "Spare us, for the love of god - how many awards do these people need?" But hang fire - the Costas (as they shall henceforth be known) aren't new awards at all. They are, merely, the awards formerly known as the Whitbreads, in caffeinated clothing.
The retentive among you may recall that, after Whitbread resigned its sponsorship of the awards last year, the Costa Coffee chain announced in June that it would be taking on the mantle. Remarkably, given Whitbread's lengthy association with the awards, there was very little consternation over the handover. The consensus, indeed, appeared to be that this was a reasonable move - even, perhaps, a fitting one, given the strong association (largely commercially generated, let's face it) between reading, or bookshops, and coffee. And, of course, a change of name should really have no bearing whatsoever on quality of the awards themselves (the sponsorship of the Booker by the faceless Man Group plc has had no discernible effect on the prize's output).
And yet. I found myself thinking, when I read through the shortlisted titles today, that the overall tone was just a trifle ... frothy. Allow me to immediately semi-retract that: the biography, poetry and children's shortlists all sport extremely Whitbread-worthy titles - John Stubbs' Donne: the Reformed Soul; wonderful collections from Vicki Feaver, Hugo Williams and Seamus Heaney; Meg Rosoff's vibrant second novel, Just in Case. And it pains me to admit that I've yet to read any of the shortlisted first novels, so no judgment-passing there. No, it's the novel category shortlist that came across as a little bit lightweight. David Mitchell's Black Swan Green is a perfectly entertaining novel about 80s adolescence and divorce, but not a patch on his earlier books; Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother is, in the words of the Guardian's reviewer, Patrick Ness, a "readable yet strangely undemanding novel of familiar domestic drama". William Boyd's Restless has been well received but isn't generally considered to be among his best works. Neil Griffiths' Saving Caravaggio is the dark horse on the shortlist: it has received very little review coverage so far, and I'll certainly be reading it with interest.
Now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that there's anything wrong with any of these books on their own; just that when taken together they produce a shortlist that feels slightly run-of-the-mill, particularly when you consider the titles that haven't made the cut (Howard Jacobson's Kalooki Nights, for example, or Andrew O'Hagan's superb Be Near Me). I'm fully expecting to be shot down in flames for snobbishness and elitism - but I'd really like to know whether or not I'm alone in this.
And one other thing - these shortlists have set me thinking about the books I've enjoyed this year, and as a result I've come to the conclusion that Costa should set up a short stories category, too. If I was to recommend one book I've read this year, it would be Bernard MacLaverty's latest collection, Matters of Life and Death. Who's with me?
