"And now, the news where you are." So begins the regional news anywhere you go in Britain, apart probably from London. And so introduces our main character here, Frank Allcroft, depressingly funny man - you know the kind, tweed jacket, touchy feely (in other words has no sense of boundaries) and the unfunniest man in Europe with a wicked set of jokes. He's not a bad bloke though, devoted to his wife and daughter, the daughter who he is giving a tour of the 1980s Birmingham before it is all demolished in the wave of demolition and rebuilding that has gone on since, well, forever. As someone says in this novel, Brummies get tired of bits of their city and so they pull it down and build something else. I've noticed this too and it seemed like a good thing, even though my home town of Kingston upon Thames has had the heart ripped out of it since the 1990s and all the pubs are gone. Because Frank is the son of Douglas Allcroft, who isn't John Madin*. No, he isn't, because he's Douglas Allcroft, but he did build some seminal buildings across Brum and all but one of them have been pulled down. It's that that Frank is showing his little girl who is actually very interested in all that stuff, because after all (as also said at some point in the book) it is very important. This is about the places people have to live in, where they have their families and so on.

Last week I heard a keynote speech by Wayne Hemingway of Red or Dead, who being an upstanding Northern lad had some words to say about things today, or more specifically the places we assign people to live in. The important thing is possibly flexibility. The ability to change. Vasty monoliths don't do it; but then are some of the large housing estates monolithic? Is for example the estate where I lived for many years in West London, on the site of an old public school, where the local residents made it bloom by putting tubs of plants in the public areas? Less monolithic than you think.But then again Frank is putting his mother in a Home -- quite possibly one of those which are called Villages and cater for every amenity but are they places to live? He isn't convinced. Mind you, comments like "why aren't they screaming?" are not helpful and can only be answered by saying reasonably, "Why aren't you?"

This novel made me think much about the way that we have torn down urban fabric; although central Brum may be better than it was a few years ago, as in other places much has been lost. I was less convinced by the ending as it leaves behind its original apparently clear purpose to head for a mysterious-death plot that isn't where it started out. It isn't that we (the reader) weren't looking, it really didn't start out that way.

Apparently Catherine O'Flynn's first novel is better, but this was good anyhow.