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Judging panel forgives poor ending after central character wins them over, writes Arifa Akbar Novelist Sebastian Barry was named the winner of the Costa Book of the Year award in spite of writing a novel that was, according to the judges "flawed in many ways".
The decision to award Barry, a 53-year-old Dubliner, with the `A325,000 Costa prize for The Secret Scripture was in spite of the fact that the book had "a lot wrong with it" in the eyes of the nine-strong judging panel. Barry’s book, which had been tipped to win the 2008 Booker Prize and only narrowly lost out during the final judging, was selected from a shortlist of five writers who were named category winners this month. The story revolves around Roseanne McNulty, who is facing an uncertain future on the approach of her 100th birthday as the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, where she has spent most of her adult life, prepares to close. Matthew Parris, the columnist and chair of the judges, said the competition between Barry and Adam Foulds, who nearly claimed the prize for his poetic works, The Broken Word, was "extraordinarily close". Parris said the judges agreed to give the prize to Barry’s book despite its less than perfect ending. "It was an extraordinarily close finish among the judges," said Parris. "There was huge support for both. The feeling among judges was that there was a lot wrong with it (The Secret Scripture). It was flawed in many ways, almost no one liked its ending. For some, this was fatal. I don’t think the ending works, no-body thought the ending worked. But there was a feeling among the judges that many great works of literature are also flawed." It was the narrative strength of the central character, Roseanne, which helped Barry triumph, he added. "Some thought the voice of [the character] Mr Green did not work as well as Roseanne’s. In Roseanne, a narrator has been created that is so transcendent that it redeems all the structural weaknesses of the book." William Hill bookmakers had predicted that the book would win. Meanwhile, Foulds, 33, was hailed as an extraordinary talent for his poetic sequence that charts a young man’s progress through a dark period in British colonial history — the Mau Mau uprisings in Kenya. — By arrangement with The Independent
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