What Was Lost Was Lost" was the winner in the first novel category of the Costa Book Awards. O'Flynn received a £5,000 prize. It was short-listed for the overall Costa Book of the Year Award. The Costa Book Awards' judging panel, chaired by Joanna Trollope, praised the novel for "blending humour and pathos in a cleverly constructed and absorbing mystery." They described the novel as inventive, compelling, and poignant. "What Was Lost" was long-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction. It was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award. It won the Jelf Group First Novel Award
Charles S. Mott Prize Foundation, the three awards were consolidated into a single $250,000 General Motors Cancer Research Award.. In 2006, the first and only winner of the General Motors Cancer Research Award was Napoleone Ferrara. Since 2006 no further prizes have been awarded. Charles S. Mott Prize The Charles S. Mott Prize was awarded annually by the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation as one of a trio of scientific prizes entirely devoted to cancer research, the other two being the Charles F. Kettering Prize and the Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize. The prizes, worth US$250,000, were awarded annually between 1979 and 2005. The