Anne Enright and Sara Baume on Costa awards shortlist

£30,000 overall prize and £5,000 category prizes to be announced in January

Sara Baume, winner of the 2014 Davy Byrne’s Short Story award, left,  with Redmond Doran of Davy Byrne’s and Anne Enright, a former winner of the €15,000 award . Both authors have been shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Awards. Photograph: Dave Meehan
Sara Baume, winner of the 2014 Davy Byrne’s Short Story award, left, with Redmond Doran of Davy Byrne’s and Anne Enright, a former winner of the €15,000 award . Both authors have been shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Awards. Photograph: Dave Meehan

Anne Enright has been shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Novel Award for The Green Road while Sara Baume has been shortlisted for the 2015 Costa First Novel Award for Spill Simmer Falter Wither, which Enright launched earlier this year in her role as the inaugural Laureate of Irish Fiction.

Enright is up against previous winner Kate Atkinson for A God in Ruins; Patrick Gale for A Place Called Winter; and Melissa Harrison for At Hawthorn Time. In The Green Road, described by the judges as “a masterful portrait of a fractured family told in stark yet sparkling prose,” the children of Rosaleen Madigan leave the west of Ireland for lives they never could have imagined in Dublin, New York and various third-world towns. In her early old age their difficult, wonderful mother announces that she’s decided to sell the house and divide the proceeds. Her adult children come back for a last Christmas with the feeling that their childhoods are being erased, their personal history bought and sold.

Baume’s rivals are Kate Hamer for The Girl in the Red Coat; Andrew Michael Hurley for The Loney; and Tasha Kavanagh for Things We Have in Common. In Spill Simmer Falter Wither, described by the judges as “a tough but tender, brilliant read full of fresh wonder. One to cherish,” a misfit man, Ray, aged 57, “too old for starting over, too young for giving up”, finds a misfit dog, One Eye, a vicious little bugger, smaller than expected, a good ratter. Both are accustomed to being alone, unloved, outcast – but they quickly find in each other a strange companionship of sorts. As spring turns to summer, their relationship grows and intensifies, until a savage act forces them to abandon the precarious life they’d established, and take to the road.

The two Irish authors are no strangers to awards. Enright won the Man Booker Prize and Irish Novel of the Year for The Gathering; the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for The Portable Virgin; the Encore Award for What Are You Like?; and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for The Forgotten Waltz; as well as the Davy Byrnes short story award. Baume also won the latter prize last year, as well as the Hennessy New Irish Writer award.

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The Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread, is the only major book prize that is open solely to authors resident in Britain and Ireland and also, uniquely, recognises the most enjoyable books across five categories – first novel, novel, biography, poetry and children’s book – published in the last year.

Winners in the five categories, who each receive £5,000, will be announced on January 4th, 2016. The overall winner of the 2015 Costa Book of the Year will receive £30,000 and will be selected and announced on January 26th. This year’s winner was H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald.

COSTA BOOK AWARDS 2015 SHORTLISTS

2015 Costa Novel Award shortlist

Kate Atkinson for A God in Ruins (Doubleday)

Anne Enright The Green Road (Jonathan Cape)

Patrick Gale for A Place Called Winter (Tinder Press)

Melissa Harrison for At Hawthorn Time (Bloomsbury)

2015 Costa First Novel Award shortlist

Sara Baume for Spill Simmer Falter Wither (Tramp Press / Windmill Books)

Kate Hamer for The Girl in the Red Coat (Faber & Faber)

Andrew Michael Hurley for The Loney (John Murray)

Tasha Kavanagh for Things We Have in Common (Canongate)

2015 Costa Biography Award shortlist

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst for The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland (Harvill Secker)

Thomas Harding for The House by the Lake (William Heinemann)

Ruth Scurr for John Aubrey: My Own Life (Chatto & Windus)

Andrea Wulf for The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science (John Murray)

2015 Costa Poetry Award shortlist

Andrew McMillan for Physical (Jonathan Cape)

Kate Miller for The Observances (Carcanet)

Don Paterson for 40 Sonnets (Faber & Faber)

Neil Rollinson for Talking Dead (Jonathan Cape)

2015 Costa Children’s Book Award shortlist

Frances Hardinge for The Lie Tree (Macmillan Children’s Books)

Hayley Long for Sophie Someone (Hot Key Books)

Sally Nicholls for An Island of Our Own (Scholastic)

Andrew Norriss for Jessica’s Ghost (David Fickling Books)