The News Where You Are

I had a really smelly copy of this book which made it hard to get into. Sometimes library copies have obviously been in the home of a smoker, or several smokers, but Catherine O'Flynn's book The News Where You Are smelled like someone had rubbed it up under their armpits and only then had they blown second-hand smoke through its pages.

So, yeah, it was hard to pick up. I was also afraid it would be yet another book about a man having a mid-life crisis, which seems to be the rut I've fallen into for some reason. And yes, it turns out it IS about men having crises--not necessarily mid-life, but certainly about life. It's about vanity and lack of vanity and whether or not we should cling to the past or embrace the future. The story opens with a murder--a hit-and-run--but the mystery behind that is less interesting than you think it's going to be. Our symbol for all that is right or wrong in life is in the form of protagonist Frank Allcroft.

Frank is a local news anchor who has stayed local well past the time most in his profession move on to bigger and better. Frank is happy enough where he is, though contented is more of the word. Or maybe lazy? Or is it stuck? He's not unhappy, in spite of some sad or stumbling events at the moment. His mentor Phil has just been killed in a car accident at the age of 78 and at the same time, Frank's famous father's buildings are slowly being demolished around Birmingham, UK. The juxtaposition of losing his father figure and the architectural link Frank had to the distant father he barely knew would be enough to send anyone into a tailspin. But Frank doesn't really spin. He's too solid in his outlook. His depressive mother does her best to finish him off (mentally), but she's too amusing for him (or us) to really believe she's depressive. His wife wins the award for the least jealous, most supportive wife in literature and so it is his various female co-hosts who are left to express anger and resentment at the slow slide women feel in a profession built on looks and youth. As well as to point out how stupid TV news--with local color! --is becoming.

Frank takes his job very seriously and seems to enjoy it and his life. He answers every letter and email unless they are "outright abusive or threatening" (company policy). One letter, written in all lower case is from someone who claims to have seen him going into a liquor store and then to have followed him to a house of ill repute. The "friend" reminds him that "jesus is watching and so am i."

Frank obviously isn't a shabby, closet drinker who pays for prostitutes when off air. No, Frank is the sort of man who pays for someone else to write really bad jokes that he then bungles on air. This is what Frank is known for (to everyone except the letter writer, obviously). He inherited his joke writer from mentor Phil and felt too kind and obligated not to continue the arrangement, knowing full well that he can't deliver humor the way Phil could. He's earnest in an non-annoying way and he's not much of a trouble maker at all so he's not sure how to answer this particular email.

Frank wondered if he should mention in his reply that he'd never been in that branch of Oddbins. He wondered if that mattered...He thought about the shabby man who had been followed in error. He liked the idea of having a double out there absorbing the sidelong glances and the harmful thought waves. He imagined the man as his tireless protector, his clothes shabby from pounding the city streets 24/7 as Frank, taking the odd drink to fortify himself against the baffling comments people shouted out to him.

This sort of thinking is exactly why he ends up doing PA events for just about anyone who asks, and why he is still happy enough at his job. In some ways, Frank is a refreshing character--someone who is just as he appears to be, without being dull. A tricky balance for a writer to pull off, but I think O'Flynn manages it well.

The mysterious death of Phil was a bit of a let down, but this book never was about Phil anyway.In the end, the important characters come together unexpectedly, Phil's death is resolved, Frank grows up, and all is well in the heart of England.