This year's Whitbread roll call has certainly thrown up a few surprises. Tash Aw beat Orange new fiction prize-winner Diana Evans to take the first novel award with The Harmony Silk Factory; Kate Thompson edged out three-times Whitbread winner Geraldine McCaughrean for the children's book award with The New Policeman (which won the Guardian Children's Fiction prize last year). In the novel category, Ali Smith perpetrated perhaps the biggest coup, knocking out Salman Rushdie and Nick Hornby at the shortlist stage, and Kazuo Ishiguro, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan and Booker-winner John Banville at the longlist (although no one who has read The Accidental will be at all surprised). Fans of veteran poet Christopher Logue will be equally delighted by his deserved but unexpected win for the fifth volume of his version of Homer's Iliad: the odds were firmly in favour of David Harsent, who won this year's Forward Prize with his collection of war poetry, Legion. The only widely anticipated win was Hilary Spurling's biography award for the second volume of her life of Matisse. All five will now compete for the Whitbread book of the year gong, which will be awarded at a ceremony in London on the 24th of this month.
Unfortunately, when it comes to prize predictions, we at the Vulture have a remarkable and unerring gift for backing the wrong horse. Like Robert the Bruce's spider, however, our philosophy is "try, try and try again", so here goes: our tip for the title of Whitbread book of the year 2005 is Hilary Spurling's Matisse the Master. Fifteen years in the making, it was described by the judges as a "masterpiece" and widely applauded by reviewers. Personally, I'd love to see Ali Smith win: The Accidental is a vivid, experimental, gloriously accomplished novel, and in my opinion, she was robbed of the Booker. But enough about us. What do you think?
