Who should win the Costa?

The Costa book of the year award announced tonight at Quaglino's in London is particular in several ways. First, it pitches children's literature, novels, debut novels, biography and poetry against each other notoriously, presenting judges with a marked challenge. In some ways, though, no more so than that faced by the Turner prize judges who must frequently decide between painting, sculpture, video, installation, and, in the case of last year's prize, sound. On the other hand, it's true to say that certain genres do better, statistically, than others in the Costas set up in 1971 as the Whitbread. A children's book has won only once Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass.Will it be the chance of children's literature again, finally, this year? It would certainly cause an upset if it did win; Jason Wallace's Out of Shadows is a rank outsider. I loved it: a dark and intense school story in which the cruelty and bullying of children is given a hideous resonance in the setting of 1980s Zimbabwe. Wallace sent it to 100 agents and publishers before it was taken on, having written the book on his daily commute between south London and Waterloo. The bookies' favourite is Edmund de Waal's The Hare With the Amber Eyes. It's an incredibly rich read: so much more than simply a family memoir seen through the prism of a collection of 264 netsuke (tiny Japanese carved ornaments) bought by his ancestor in 19th-century Paris. I especially like three things about it: first that it is so meticulously researched you can tell, and indeed de Waal regularly mentions that he disappeared into many enjoyable research rabbit-holes before (it seems) junking the extraneous material and coming up with a beautifully shaped, elegant, poetically written piece of work. And yet you feel all the knowledge, all that research, infinitely enriches the eventual book. Second, the book's story is inescapably gripping and moving. I wept embarrassingly as I read the book on a train to Scotland last week. Third, as one would hope from ! one of B ritain's most interesting and accomplished ceramic artists, is his skill at describing objects, and their relationships with people. There are only one or two pictures in the book: but in fact they are hardly needed. De Waal does it all with words.Maggie O'Farrell's fifth novel, The Hand that First Held Mine, is also a gripping read two narratives run in parallel, as we follow headstrong, clever Lexie through seedy postwar London, and also Elina in present-day Hampstead, struggling with a disorienting first motherhood. In the end, I perhaps found its denouement a little contrived, but it would still be a worthy and popular winner.Jo Shapcott's wonderful Of Mutability treats with the body's relationship with the world, its frailty and changeability, its sometime strength. The book which mentions her oncology team in the acknowledgements was written after the poet had received treatment for breast cancer. I love these poems: hearing her read from them was a highlight for me of the Cheltenham literature festival. Finally, Kishwar Desai's debut novel, Witness the Night, is a Punjab-set whodunnit, featuring the fabulously unconventional middle-aged social worker Simran, who smokes, drinks and generally infuriates her mother by refusing to marry. Simran is brought in to assess the mental health of Durga, who has apparently murdered her entire family. But dark information about corruption and female infanticide emerges and the waters are muddied. I loved Simran as a character and I could see the TV adaptation, the middle-aged, female, Indian Zen perhaps but I felt the book was a little unevenly written to stand out as a winner.De Waal, then, is the most likely winner: but literary judges are a notoriously unpredicatable breed, so I'll certainly be prepared for a surprise.