How to Be Both’s daring combination of contemporary and Renaissance stories leads betting for the prestigious awards’ overall winner
Read extracts from all the category winners
• Vote for your favourite in the poll below
Read extracts from all the category winners
• Vote for your favourite in the poll below
Ali Smith’s dazzling literary novel How to Be Both is frontrunner to win the Costa book of the year awardon Tuesday evening – but Emma Healey’s debut Elizabeth is Missing looks set to be the readers’ choice for the prize.
Smith’s novel, which brings together the stories of a modern teenager and a Renaissance artist, was the odds-on favourite at 5/4 on Monday to win the £30,000 award by bookmakers William Hill. Helen Macdonald’s memoir of bereavement and hawk-training, H is for Hawk, came in second place for the bookie, at 11/4, with Healey’s tale of an old woman, Maud, who is losing her memory but convinced that her friend Elizabeth has gone missing, at 5/1.
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