Book 4: 10 December 2008
The 1980s. Kate Meaney – with her ‘Top Secret’ notebook and
Mickey her toy monkey – is busy being a junior detective. She observes goings-on and follows ’suspects’ at the newly opened Green Oaks shopping centre and in her street, where she is friends with the newsagent’s son, Adrian. But when this curious, independent-spirited young girl disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion and is hounded out of his home by the press.
Then, in 2004, Adrian’s sister Lisa – stuck in a going-nowhere relationship – is working as a deputy manager at Your Music, a cut-price record store. Every day she tears her hair out at the horribly bizarre behavior of her customers and colleagues. But together with security guard Kurt, she becomes entranced by the little girl they keep glimpsing on the centre’s CCTV. As their after-hours friendship intensifies, they investigate how these sightings might be connected to the unsettling history of Green Oaks itself.
Longlisted for the Booker and Orange Prize, short-listed for the Guardian Young Writers Award and winner of the Costa First Novel Award, O’Flynn’s evocative debut was lauded on its publication in 2007. Praised by the Guardian as ‘An exceptional, polyphonic novel of urban disaffection, written with humour and pathos’ and by Jonathon Coe (one of my favourites!) as “A great debut novel from an awesomely talented writer”, I was won over when first read it for its pitch perfect evocation of the joys of working in retail: as the Independent noted “O’Flynn saves her best lines for the more monstrous members of the retail trade” (and boy do they deserve it- I worked, for one horrific month, in the Metrocentre…) I’m currently re-reading and can’t wait to see what you lot think.
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