The overall Book of the Year Award winner and winner of the Debut Fiction category wasThe Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley.
Hurley’s Lancashire set gothic horror had previously won the Costa First Novel Award 2015.
If it had another name, I never knew, but the locals called it the Loney - that strange nowhere between the Wyre and the Lune where Hanny and I went every Easter time with Mummer, Father, Mr and Mrs Belderboss and Father Wilfred, the parish priest. It was impossible to truly know the place. It changed with each influx and retreat, and the neap tides would reveal the skeletons of those who thought they could escape its insidious currents. No one ever went near the water. No one apart from us, that is. I suppose I always knew that what happened there wouldn't stay hidden for ever, no matter how much I wanted it to.
This sounds right up my street and will shortly be joining my to read pile!
Other Category Winners were:
Children’s Book of the YearMy Brother is a Superhero by David Solomons
My brother is a superhero, and I could have been one too, except that I needed to go for a wee. My name is Luke Parker, I'm 11 years old and I live in a mild-mannered part of London with my mum, dad and big brother, Zack. He wasn't always a superhero, but with a name like Zack you've got to wonder if my parents had a hunch that one day he'd end up wearing a mask and cape and saving orphans from buring buildings. I mean, come on! It's what you get in a comic when a superhero punches a supervillain. Pow! Blam! Zack!
Non-Fiction Book of the Year Norwegian Wood by Lars Mytting
"Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection" Henry David Thoreau.
Chopping and stacking wood is a pastime where the world makes sense once more. Because our relationship to fire is so ancient, so universal, it seems that in learning about wood, you can also learn about life.
Whether you are a seasoned woodcutter, or your passion is yet to be kindled (pun intended), Norwegian Wood is the perfect fireside read.
Fiction Book of the Year A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015 and the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016.
When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realise, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he'll not only be unable to overcome - but that will define his life forever.
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