The News Where You Are: A Novel

✍ Scribed by O'flynn, Catherine

• Publisher: Picador
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: en-GB
• Weight: 159 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780805091809

✦ Synopsis

From 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.
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Review

"Heartbreakingly funny.... O’Flynn makes us reconsider the things we choose to lose--and the things we forget to remember until it’s too late."--Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

“This superbly written novel begins with deceptive simplicity and humor, and quietly blossoms into a precisely observed story about loss, aging, friendship, and reinvention. . . . [O’Flynn’s] writing has unmistakable authenticity, delicately balancing comedy and tragedy. It’s a difficult trick, one that she has mastered with impressive grace.”—Diane White, The Boston Globe

“Writing a second novel is a nervy business for a writer, especially when the first one has been unexpectedly and wonderfully successful, as was Catherine O'Flynn's debut What Was Lost , which went on to win the 2008 Costa first novel and a cluster of other awards. But O'Flynn need not be nervous. Her second novel, The News Where You Are , establishes her as, let's say, the JG Ballard of Birmingham. As Ballard dealt with the landscape of the motorway and made it his own, so O'Flynn deals with her particular city, finding poetry and meaning where others see merely boredom and dereliction. It is a most moving book. Lightly flinging a joke or two in the reader's direction, a snatch or so of knowledgeable brightness, O'Flynn comes across as the mistress of compassion.… This [is a] blend of Dickens and Alan Bennett, written in the kind of stripped-down, flat style that so suits its time and place. I loved it, and am haunted by it. While What Was Lost benefited from the existence of an actual child ghost ... this book is set in a less metaphorical, less fanciful world, but it has equal power. If you can write two good novels you can write another and another and another: I am sure O'Flynn will and I look forward to them.”--Fay Weldon, The Guardian

"Catherine O'Flynn's narratives of urban disenchantment answer the challenge for novelists to take the ordinary and make it compelling. The setting of her Costa First Novel Award-winning What Was Lost was the unexceptional world of a Midlands city shopping mall. In this second fictional outing, a regional TV studio becomes a symbol of the awfulness of modern mass culture.... Tenderly portrayed, like all O'Flynn characters, [Frank] is far more interested in the invisible lives of people beyond the news, in particular those whose only brief claim to fame is the sad mode of their passing: alone and forgotten in the city.... O'Flynn's eye for the quotidian ridiculous is sharp enough to rank her with Mark Haddon and Marina Lewycka--comic novelists worth taking seriously.... This funny, moving novel reflects back to us our everyday selves."--Rachel Hore, The Independent (UK)

"That O'Flynn can balance stylized minimalism with a wholly engaging narrative is the mark of a serious writer.... A work of some real literary weight. Beneath the un-screaming facades of O'Flynn's characters is a searing denunciation of modern values, and a writer who isn't afraid to sacrifice the conventions of depth for experiments in shape and restraint."--Martha Schabas, Globe and Mail

"Seriously uplifting. It's a funny, moving, acutely observed story about family and loss, getting old and being alone. That it also manages to take in British architecture and urban space and the problems of celebrity culture, while being disarmingly easy to read, is testament to Catherine O'Flynn's comic timing and lightness of touch.... O'Flynn's description of the editorial conference at the TV station where Frank works is hilarious ... Her great strength is to take characters who are, in a way, familiar, who could be annoying, perhaps even pathetic, and to invest them with a palpable humanity and dignity. A stand-out character is Frank's eight-year-old daughter, Mo. Full of questions, anxieties and quirks, she's Frank's connection to how wonderful and scary and strange the world is. She's the kind of child who worries that trampolines near canals might be death traps and who takes it on herself to cheer up her miserable grandmother, providing some truly funny moments.... A pleasurable, satisfying gem of a novel."--Claire Black, Scotland _ on Sunday _(Edinburgh)

"O’Flynn’s second novel is also set in the Midlands but is about remembrance.... [The News Where You Are]’s gentle wit and melancholy are beguiling."--David Headley, The Daily Express

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"_The News Where You Are _proves that all of the praise won by [O’Flynn’s] eerie debut was no fluke.... With beautifully drawn characters and O’Flynn’s uncanny sense of psychology, this novel is a moving, funny, and often affirming exploration of fatherhood and the ways in which our inner lives don’t match our outer ones."--Brian Lynch, Georgia Straight(Vancouver, Canada)

"Author of the critically acclaimed What Was Lost , O’Flynn tends to focus on what people discard, on those people and things that have been passed by and forgotten. Here, Frank identifies with them and lets them know that they are not invisible to him._ A sometimes humorous and always compassionate novel about approaching the fear of going out of style and becoming obsolete, with the perspective that history and memories afford."-- Library Journal_

"_The News Where You Are _is a compelling, moving and wonderful exploration of what it means to age, of how our sense of ourselves changes in ways we would never expect and can't always control. O'Flynn writes with a humor and subtle grace that underscores the urgency with which her characters approach their own ends."--Steven Galloway, author of The Cellist of Sarajevo

“_The News Where You Are _is a stunning accomplishment, a page-turner shot through with O'Flynn's compassion and electrifying wit. O'Flynn gives us an unflinching vision of profound loss without ever losing her sense of humor; she shows us that the haunted corridors of the heart can also echo with laughter.”--Karen Russell, author of St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves