I have just finished Catherine O’Flynn’s new book — it’s a corker. As the acknowledgements page makes very clear this book is not about Midlands Today, nor is it about Nick Owen (despite the theme of poor witticisms in local news bulletins). It’s not a book about Birmingham Central Library, nor its architect John Madin. It’s not a book about Birmingham, despite being set here (brilliantly evocatively without being cliquey). If Catherine O’Flynn’s first novel What Was Lost was about longing, The News Where You Are is about loss. Loss of loved ones, loss of the past, loss of hope for the future — and, more than that, the loss of past hopes for a future that doesn’t materialise. A future of pedestrian walkways and inner (and outer) ring-roads, of clean lines and surface. It’s not bleak, in fact it’s very human — for each loss there’s a new beginning, for each demolition a listing (or at least a stay of execution), for each problem as resolution of sorts. Except the standard of food in the BBC canteen. Frank Allcroft the novel’s ‘unfunniest man on God’s earth’ is a kind of Nick Owen, but he’s also Gordon Burns, Fred Dinage,...
