The News Where You Are

Jun 1, 2025 9:58 AM

Author:Catherine O'Flynn

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.

Reviews

These three women fairly sashay - or should that be stagger - off the page

—— Marie Claire

He is, in the finest sense, a world novelist

—— Guardian

His greatest novel, The Tree of Man is a tragic pastoral about the penitential struggle with nature in a grim Australian Eden

—— Peter Conrad , Observer

The novel has unforgettable scenes, marvellous characters, wide ranges of mood, strikingly fresh imagery - all those ingredients which make a novel...become a permanent part of our memory

—— Washington Post

A timeless work of art from which no essential element of life has been omitted

—— New York Times Book Review

Roth's writing looks uncompromisingly straightforward but is subtle and clever... A human story for our times

—— New Statesman

The genius of this short, bleak, remarkable novel stems from the way that Roth turns his desolate assessment of death into something bracing: an angry acceptance that mortality is the price we pay for the sheer wonder of this thing called life

—— The Times

Every sentence and every paragraph works with the coiled precision of the watch mechanisms that the narrators father repairs and glitters with the lapidary perfection of the perfection he sells

—— Independent on Sunday

A savage, heart-wrenching novella

—— Harper's Bazaar

A simple beautiful ending to a deeply sombre book

—— Scotland on Sunday

There is enough plot for several novels here (enough sex for dozens), all vividly conveyed in the author's excitable style... Her many fans will not be disappointed

—— Literary Review

Harris does it again with this brilliantly told tale.

—— THE SUN

Voluptuous helpings of magic, mystery, love and, of course, mouthwatering discriptions of her favourite chocolates, combine to make a rich, satisfying story that should keep you riveted to your sun lounger page after page

—— SHE magazine

The Lollipop Shoes is a sensory fantasy, Harris writes with an original and satisfying poetic flair.

—— DAILY TELEGRAPH

...the magic still enchants

—— MAIL ON SUNDAY

...a sumptuous treat.

—— HEAT Magazine, May 2007

...a sensory fantasy, Harris writes with an original and satisfying poetic flair. Harris is a delicious treat.

—— DAILY TELEGRAPH

This novel has the richness of the best quality dark chocolate.

—— INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

Sparkling black comedy

—— Play

Pearson is a hilarious author who captures the guilt and the exhaustion of the working mother's life perfectly

—— Dublin Daily

It's the incisive details and Pearson's vivid writing that propel the story

—— New York Times Books

Smart book...great fun

—— New York Times

Pearson is insightful, witty and full of fun

—— Daily Telegraph

Wonderfully warm, witty and intelligent

—— Sunday independent

A Bible for the working woman

—— Oprah Winfrey

Her social observation is unerringly accurate...so beautifully written that it brought tears to my eyes, as well as a wry smile

—— Daily Telegraph

Pearson...to write a novel...that has already sold a gazillion copies and is going to become a film. Hats off to you, madam!

—— Ok Magazine

She will...make you laugh

—— Culture, Sunday Times

Pearson...has made it all fresh again

—— Time

Entertaining, compulsively readable, and brilliantly written

—— Daily Candy

Hilarious and...poignant

—— Publisher's Weekly

This terrific novel is alternately hilarious and sad

—— Upfront

It may change your life

—— The Observer

Pearson is a very witty and moving writer. Her prose is spare and skilful...waspish truisms and spot-on social observations

—— Daily Express

Intelligent, witty and of-the-moment, it mixes sassy, brittle perceptions with barefaced sentimentality

—— The Herald, Glasgow

Brilliantly captures and defines the mood of the moment...sparkling wit and razor sharp insights

—— XW Magazine

Sharply observed and frequently funny

—— Evening Standard

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