REVIEWS

“The News Where You Are establishes [O’Flynn] as, let's say, the JG Ballard of Birmingham….It is a most moving book….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.”—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….Tenderly portrayed, like all O'Flynn characters, [Frank] is far more interested in the invisible lives of people beyond the news....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)

"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....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 pleasurable, satisfying gem of a novel."—Scotland on Sunday (Edinburgh)

"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

CATHERINE O'FLYNN's debut novel, What Was Lost, won the Costa First Novel Award in 2007, was short-listed for The Guardian First Book Award, and was long-listed for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. She lives in Birmingham, England.

* packaged in a sturdy vinyl case.