Colm TÓIBÍN takes the Costa for Brooklyn!

IRISH AUTHOR COLM TÓIBÍN has won the 2009 Costa Novel Award for his novel, Brooklyn, the story of a young woman’s emigration from Ireland to New York in the 1950s, while Raphael Selbourne takes the prize for Best First Novel. Christopher Reid’s A Scattering won for Poetry. Graham Farmelo’s The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius won for Biography and Patrick Ness’s The Ask and the Answer for Children’s. Who will win the 2009 Costa Book of the Year? I think it’s a toss-up between Brooklyn or A Scattering. The winner will be announced on January 26, 2009.