The eyes have it as de Waal's hare wins race;Once the memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal, won the Costa Biography Award on Tuesday it immediately loomed large as the favourite to win the overall £30,000 Costa Book of the Year prize, to be announced in London on January 25th.
The surprise hit of 2010, in which ceramic artist de Waal uses the family heirloom of a collection of miniature carvings of animals, plants and people called netsuke to unlock and tell the story of his family across generations, was widely picked in the books-of-the-year spreads at the end of last month. Having started to pot when he was five, de Waal was an appropriate one to inherit the netsuke. Best known for his groups of porcelain vessels, now in the collections of 30 international museums, he has created installations for both the VA and Tate Britain.
When writing the memoir he had no notion that anyone outside the family would read it. He thought he’d be back making pots by now but is obviously delighted at the way the book’s runaway success has changed his life.
For the overall title he's up against the novelist Maggie O'Farrell, the debut novelist Kishwar Desai, the children's author Jason Wallace, and Jo Shapcott, who won Costa's poetry prize with Of Mutability, her first new work in more than a decade, in part influenced by her experience of breast cancer and which the judges found fizzing with variety.
Most commonly the overall award has been won by a novel. The last time a biography won was in 2005, when Hilary Spurling won with Matisse: The Master. It's nerve-racking to be the front runner, and there have often been surprises at the eleventh hour, but in giving The Hare with Amber Eyesthe biography prize the judges were right when they identified it as "a truly special book".
Talks remember a much-maligned decade
That much-maligned decade the 1950s is the subject of a series of public lectures run by the school of English at Trinity College Dublin that kicks off on January 25th with the writer Thomas Kilroy giving an introductory talk entitled A Memoir of the Fifties. Next up, on February 1st, is Nicholas Grene, with Samuel Beckett: Waiting for the End.
Other lectures between now and the end of March include Sam Slote on Elvis Presley; Eoin O'Brien on Nevill Johnson (1911-1999), an artist adrift in "Baggotonia" in 1950s Dublin; Edwina Keown on Colin MacInnes's Absolute Beginners; and Gerald Dawe with a lecture entitled From Ginger Man and Borstal Boy to Kitty Stobling: A Brief Look Back at the Fifties.
The cost is €6 per lecture or €50 for the full course, with concessions; all are at the Ui Chadhain Theatre, in the college’s arts building. Details from 01-8962885 and oscar@tcd.ie.
Cork Spring Literary Festival coming up
Pat Boran, Patrick Cotter, Ian Duhig, Alan Garvey, James Harpur, Dave Lordan, Gerry Murphy, Leanne O’Sullivan, Matthew Sweeney, William Wall, Tomas Lieske, Adam Wyeth and Lory Manrique-Hyland are among the line-up for Cork Spring Literary Festival, from February 16th to 19th, run by Munster Literature Centre. There will also be a haiku masterclass with Gabriel Rosenstock, poet and associate of the Haiku Foundation, who has taught haiku at the Schule für Dictung – the poetry academy – in Vienna. Another workshop, entitled Fhilíocht na Gaeilge san 21ú Aois, will be conducted by the poet Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh. See munsterlit.ie.
