Review: News Where You Are Catherine O'Flynn
(Penguin Viking, €13.99)
In 2007, Catherine O'Flynn was a little-known first-time author. After 20 rejections, her book What Was Lost was published by a tiny Birmingham publishing company.
The book became an old-fashioned word-of-mouth success and went on to win the £25,000 Costa First Novel Award (previously the Whitbread prize). At the time, O'Flynn was working full-time in a ticket box office, a CV that chimed perfectly with the low-key characters that populated her book.
O'Flynn is the youngest child of Irish emigrants and grew up in Birmingham against the backdrop of her family's newsagents, which largely informs the landscape of her novels.
Her second novel, The News Where You Are, tells the story of Frank, a 40-something regional television news presenter at a crossroads in his life. His late father, Douglas, an architect who dedicated his life to his work, didn't live to see his life's work demolished (a cautionary tale about sacrificing one's life to one's work).
Frank's mother Maureen is in a 'senior living' home, having grimly resigned herself to a life of loneliness after her husband's death. Meanwhile, Frank is faced with the deadening routine of local news stories: "All of the stories, all of the faces. Heard them, seen them a million times."
The novel begins with the death of Frank's former colleague and mentor, Phil Smethway, a television presenter who is killed in a hit-and-run when he is out jogging. Phil is a star of television, and a perfect representation of our modern obsession with youth. He keeps fit, self-tans, has had his face tweaked and has a wife 40 years his junior, the ultimate weapon against the onset of old age.
Small details start to emerge that cast doubt on whether Phil's death was an accident and the novel becomes a mystery, in much the same way as O'Flynn's first novel.
But where What Was Lost was a gripping tale of the unsolved mystery of a little girl lost, The News Where You Are feels as if it's trying to repeat a winning formula.
No one writes about the minutiae of housing estates, workaday jobs and soulless suburban 'villages' like Catherine O'Flynn, and the real enjoyment of this novel is in her immaculate attention to detail and ability to use that detail to philosophise on the bigger issues of life -- love, friendship, growing old and death.
The word that best sums her up is 'bittersweet'. She is naturally drawn towards the anonymous struggles of ordinary people and, like Frank, is obsessed with giving these ordinary people a back story.
Those who read and loved What Was Lost will enjoy this too. It might not have quite the same magic as her debut, but it has enough individuality to mark O'Flynn out as a promising writer.
Buy 'News Where You Are' from Eason
Irish Independent
