Whitbread 2000: The Reviews

Reviews of the four winners of the Whitbread Book Award 2000 individual categories, which go forward to compete for the Whitbread Book of the Year.

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Novel Award

English Passengers - Matthew Kneale

"At first glance it looks like any other hefty work of historical fiction, but inside it lies a slimmer, more subversive, story."

Evening Standard

"Although it contains much that is harrowing, English Passengers is also often hilarious. Tart wit generates caustically funny scenes."

Sunday Times

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First Novel Award

White Teeth - Zadie Smith

"An extraordinarily confident debut, exploding with energy, it is a landmark novel for multicultural Britain."

The Guardian

"For once, the hype is justified. This is a strikingly clever and funny book with a passion for ideas, for language and for the rich tragi-comedy of life."

Sunday Telegraph

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Poetry Award

The Asylum House - John Burnside

"His (Burnside's) poems at their finest have powerful cerebral undercurrents which draw the reader smoothly down into realms which cannot be any less ambiguously expressed."

The Times

"A world of myth, beyond which lies a 'somewhere in-between' of mists or sudden light. A collection with stunning unity of tone, style and purpose an epiphany on every page."

The Guardian

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Biography Award

Bad Blood: A Memoir - Lorna Sage

"A beautiful account of a hellish, post-war childhood that lifts your spirits, even as it hurts your heart."

Daily Telegraph

"The bad blood of Sage's own family rushes and sings in her prose and in her veins - she looks back in some anger, but with a passion and compassion that relishes the rasping textures of her childhood."

The Times