Urban inspiration
- Source: Global Times
- [08:51 December 06 2010]
- Comments
Book The News Where You Are
By Jiang Yuxia
With her debut novel gaining in popularity and her second published to critical acclaim earlier this year, new British writer Catherine O'Flynn, a Costa Book Award-winning novelist, spoke with the Global Times during a recent trip to China about her writing and the city which gave her most of her inspiration.
"I like to write about mundane, everyday life - the kind of life that is often undocumented in literature, " O'Flynn told the Global Times while on the New Writings from the UK: City, Life and Literature tour with prize winning authors Raphael Selbourne and Ross Raisin, last month.
"I like the idea of making the invisible visible - I'm not sure I achieve that very often, but I suppose that's my aim," the 40-year-old explained.
Her 2007 novel, What Was Lost, is about a girl who goes missing in a shopping center in the 1980s and two lonely people who try to figure out the incident 20 years later. The poignant novel won the prestigious Costa First Novel Award the year it was published and it was listed for several major prizes including the Man Booker Prize.
Her latest work The News Where You Are, published in July, tells the funny and compassionate story of a local TV news presenter who is troubled by those who die alone without leaving a trace.
Both of her books explore similar themes of love, loneliness and loss of ordinary people in urban life. "I seem to be drawn to exploring the loss and sometimes the darkness that lie underneath the surface of the everyday," O'Flynn explained.
