Costa guide award won by Nathan Filer for debut novel, The Shock of the Fall

Nathan Filer with his Costa award-winning guide. Photograph: Tal Cohen/EPA

Judges for 1 of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes on Tuesday heralded a major new talent when they named psychological health nurse Nathan Filer winner of the 2013 Costa guide award for a moving account of schizophrenia and grief.

Filer won towards far more fancied contenders, not least Kate Atkinson, for his debut novel The Shock of the Fall.

The novelist Rose Tremain, who chaired the judges, stated: “For a 1st novel it is astonishingly positive-footed … I believe there is real pleasure about this winner.”

The book is narrated by Bristol boy Matthew from the age of five to his early 20s and is a gripping account of his descent into schizophrenic sickness following the death of his younger brother. It is informed when he is at school, when he is smoking also much marijuana in a grotty flat and from the psychiatric wards he ends up in.

Tremain stated, however, it was not just about schizophrenia: “It is about grief and this is a topic we all have expertise of. It is grief analysed but handled completely with no sentimentality. It gets near that and there had been moments when I received concerned, but it always avoids them.”

The Costa prize is unusual in that it pits five category winners – novel, first novel, biography, children’s and poetry – against each and every other for the best £30,000 prize like evaluating chicken curry with custard, as one former judge mentioned.

Atkinson had been powerful favourite to win for her eighth novel Lifestyle Following Lifestyle, which would have been her 2nd Costa win. It was not to be. “There’s often going to be a bookies’ favourite,” stated Tremain. “By bookies who haven’t go through the books.”

Filer, aged 33, has worked in psychiatric wards for far more than a decade. When last asked about it he said he meant to carry on with the odd shift and to hold his nursing registration up.

Tremain said: “To take this kind of a marvellously articulated factor from his professional lifestyle and bring it to lifestyle in the way he has is such an extraordinary achievement.”

The guide is the merchandise of Filer’s MA in innovative creating at Bath Spa University, in which he now lectures.

Last year it was the topic of a fierce 11-way bidding war by publishers – constantly hunting for the following possible Mark Haddon and his The Curious Incident of the Puppy in the Night-Time. It was at some point secured by HarperCollins, who presented a six-figure deal.

Filer was plainly not expecting to win, nor was his new wife Emily who he married on Saturday. “I was 100% certain he was not going to win,” she mentioned.

He was thrilled even though. “I wrote this guide simply because I want to share it, I was not creating it for myself… I often desired men and women to read through it and winning this means far more and much more folks will read through it so I am absolutely delighted by that.”

Filer mentioned he had felt a accountability not to propagate myths close to psychological well being and would carry on nursing shifts, like one coming up on Sunday.

There is now an expectation, he is the new creating talent on the block. “Of course a pressure comes with something like this as effectively as the reward but I am not going to sit here and bemoan a pretty issue that has just happened.”

Tremain said the five contenders made up a quite excellent checklist and all the books were talked about in the two-hour meeting. “In the end it was not quite tough for us to agree.” Though “not fairly unanimous” there was no blood, Tremain mentioned. “It was a extremely excellent natured and articulate jury. It was a very entertaining afternoon.”

Filer’s Costa win will be daily life-altering, Tremain acknowledged. “There’s usually a risk with a first-time winner – is this a one particular guide wonder? You will not know. But this extraordinary fashion and self-assurance is not an simple thing to do. If I had to bet on it I would say there are far more books in this writer.”

He is the fifth first novelist to win, with prior winners like Atkinson who won in 1995 for Behind The Scenes at the Museum. The final 1 was Stef Penney in 2006 with The Tenderness of Wolves.

The other books missing out on Tuesday were Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s biography of Gabriele D’Annunzio, The Pike Michael Symmons Roberts’ poetry assortment Drysalter, and Chris Riddell’s children’s book Goth Lady and the Ghost of a Mouse.

The prize, now in its 42nd year, unashamedly rewards enjoyability. It was recognized as the Whitbread prize from 1971 to 2005.

This year’s nine-robust judging panel incorporated actor Natascha McElhone, Pointless expert Richard Osman, singer Sharleen Spiteri, and authors and writers Gerard Woodward, Emma Kennedy, Anne de Courcy, Matthew Cain and John Burnside.

Costa guide award won by Nathan Filer for debut novel, The Shock of the Fall

The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer – evaluation

‘Engaging in creating behaviour’ … writing is treatment for Filer’s narrator. Photograph: Renee Keith/Getty Images

“I have an illness, a condition with the form and sound of a snake. Whenever I understand some thing new, it learns it as well … My illness understands every little thing I know. This was a hard point to get my head around.” Matt Houses, a 19-year-previous schizophrenic struggling inside of the mental overall health program, is conducting his very own creating therapy, urgently bashing out his ideas on an old typewriter and interspersing them with letters, doodles and sketches. The Shock of the Fall, which has just won the Costa prize for very best very first novel, is superbly packaged, with drawings, varying typefaces and typographical tricks representing Matt’s swelling bundle of papers. It is a gripping, exhilarating go through.

Sectioned following failing to cope in the community, Matt is fully mindful of how intimidating he can seem to others, with his gawky height and army-camouflage gear, unusual behaviour and internal voices. “Matthew … suffers from command hallucinations, which he attributes to a dead sibling. Crazy shit, eh?” he writes, spoofing his own healthcare notes.

The dead sibling is Simon, his older brother with Downs syndrome, who died in the course of a family members camping holiday when they have been the two kids. Matt presents the reality – “the shock of the fall” is what killed Simon – right at the start, but it is not until finally in direction of the finish that we totally uncover the situations for which Matt feels unending guilt. The gadget of delayed revelation can seem to be artificial and annoying in clumsier hands, but here it is powerful. Matt’s voice – puzzled, resolute and frank – is dazzlingly rendered, and his descriptions of lifestyle on a safe ward are fascinating.

He draws interest to flaws in his narrative and at occasions addresses the reader directly: “I can only describe reality as I know it. I’m undertaking my greatest, and promise to keep attempting.” Endeavouring to be honest, he circles about unpleasant recollections, attempting to get a buy on them. All the while, he is aware the two of the limitations of memory and of memoir, and the professional suspicion surrounding all activities of the mentally ill. He mocks the excesses of psychiatric jargon: “Patient is engaging in creating behaviour.” “In between you and me, I might take a shit in a bit. Is that engaging in shitting behaviour?”

Caustic and humorous observations take the sting out of a grim prognosis. “This sickness has a perform ethic,” Matt notes when his obsessions get the greater of him. Daily life on the ward follows the exact same dull pattern, day after day. “Repetitive, are not I? I reside a Minimize &amp Paste kind of existence.” He is especially fed up with all the promotional ware lying about. “Final time I went into the workplace to borrow the Nursing Dictionary, I counted 3 mugs, a mouse mat, a bunch of pens, two Publish-It note booklets and the wall clock – all sporting the brands of distinct medicines. It truly is like being in prison and having to look at adverts for fucking locks.” Daily life on the ward is gruelling in its tedium, as a sample hour-by-hour manual demonstrates. The indignation of Filer, a registered mental wellness nurse, resounds behind Matt’s repeated complaint: “There is literally nothing to do.”

Memorable characters are woven via the narrative, this kind of as Matt’s kindly but shattered dad and mom and his redoubtable grandmother, Nanny Noo. Even a walk-on part is sharply delineated: irritating Aunt Jacqueline “dresses all in black and talks as well significantly about magic and spirits, and will by no means not smoke, even at children’s events”. Cannot you just see her?

Shackled to an unredeemable act, Matt grapples with his previous in passages that have a sort of simple poetry: “In life there are milestones … like the day we uttered our very first proper word and the day we took our initial measures. We created it through the evening with no a nappy. We learnt other folks have emotions, and the stabilisers came off our bikes.”

Despite the fact that events take on a nightmarish tinge when dead Simon starts to hide below his hospital bed, dropping the hallucinations signifies losing his brother all over once more. Matt is heroic in his fortitude and resilience. He has a cruel disease but, as Filer exhibits, it does not have to crush the human spirit.

The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer – evaluation