The News Where You Are
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3.4 • 11 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Catherine O'Flynn, author of the Man Booker prize winning What Was Lost offers a 'funny, moving, acutely observed story about family and loss' in The News Where You Are.
Frank Allcroft, a regional TV news presenter, has just had a ratings boost. His puns, a website declares, makes him 'the unfunniest man on God's Earth'. Mortified colleagues wonder how he stands being a public joke.
But Frank doesn't mind. As long as Andrea and Mo, his wife and eight-year-old daughter, are happy, who gives a stuff what others think? Besides, Frank has a couple of other matters on his mind.
He has taken to investigating the death of Phil, his (actually quite funny) predecessor, killed in a mysterious hit and run six months ago. Also, he's telling Mo about the architect grandfather she never met by taking her to see vanished and soon-to-be-vanished buildings.
Because Frank knows that it is between what we see and what we can't, what has gone and what's left behind, that the answers lie. . .
Very funny, warm and moving, The New Where You Are is a story of family, friendship and trying to reconnect with the past before it is gone.
'Under the wisecracking surface . . . surprisingly profound' The Times
'A flow of laugh-out-loud satire' Independent on Sunday
'Awesomely talented' Tatler
'Seriously uplifting, hilarious. A funny, moving, acutely observed story about family and loss. A pleasurable, satisfying gem of a novel' Scotland on Sunday
'A blend of Dickens and Alan Bennett. I loved it' Fay Weldon
'A comic genius' Daily Mail
Catherine O'Flynn was born in 1970 and raised in Birmingham, the youngest of six children. Her parents ran a sweet shop. She worked briefly in journalism, then at a series of shopping centres. She has also been a web editor, a postwoman and a mystery shopper.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
O'Flynn follows her Costa-winning debut, What Was Lost, with a strong sophomore effort set in her hometown of Birmingham, England. Frank Allcroft has a loving wife and daughter, and a comfortable life as a local TV news anchor, but years of reporting soft news has left him dissatisfied. As that dissatisfaction reaches its nadir, the demolition of buildings designed by his late father, the somewhat mysterious death of his on-screen partner and mentor, Phil, and Frank's obsession with people who die alone lead him down a path of self-discovery. Along the way, Frank comes to terms with some lingering family issues and learns what really happened to Phil, but, in the end, it is Frank's daughter, Mo, who powers the biggest change. The mystery of Phil's death, unfortunately, comes across as little more than a plot device, but, as with most novels of middle-aged spiritual humdrum, the story is only as strong as its hero, and, in Frank, O'Flynn's created a winning if slightly pale near-everyman lost soul.
