Flake

Product Information

Dooley’s break in comics came in 2016 when he won the Observer/Jonathan Cape/Comica graphic short story prize. His entry was titled Colin Turnbull: A Tall Story, and told the tale of a man whose main ambition in life was to win Lancashire’s Tallest Milkman competition. There are some clear parallels between the two works: both Colin and Howard are doing jobs that their fathers did before them (and perhaps even their grandfathers before that). They are warm, affectionate, even nostalgic stories of professions and values that are no longer so common. It Was Wonderful to Connect with Others Who Are in My Place”– Rachael Smith Talks New Motherhood and ‘Nap Comix’ October 30, 2023

Dooley, who spends his weekends playing lawn bowls at Wimbledon Park bowls club, doesn’t deny that there’s something of himself in these anachronistic creations. “I like people or characters – and I see this in myself as well – who are obsessed by something that other people don’t care about,” he says. “Now, I like ice-cream, and I would not want to say ice-cream is mundane, because it isn’t. It’s wonderful. But the inherent naffness of an ice-cream van, the way it’s painted, it’s the mix of the absurd and the mundane.”Unfortunately, Howard’s finances are dwindling and this summer’s seen a downturn which Howard at first dismisses as one of the vagaries of his seasonal trade. It’s not. It heralds the North-West English Ice Cream Wars. Vans had for generations peacefully patrolled their family territories but now sly Tony Augustus has emerged, seemingly from nowhere, and his entente ain’t so cordiale. Tony was born of one of the Families, but not into it, and this has given him quite the chip on his fishy shoulder. His vans have begun encroaching on others’ routes, swallowing them whole like some Great White Shark of the suburban seas. And there’s a reason why he wants Howard’s more than anyone else’s. Judge Sindu Vee described the winning graphic novel as "a rare joy: a laugh out loud story with characters you want to meet again and again". Dooley commented: " Flake was published on 2nd April, amidst a huge, bewildering global crisis. It’s been a very strange experience. Winning the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize means it’s just got stranger in the best possible way. I’m surprised, overwhelmed and elated to have won." We had none of us, I think, expected a graphic novel to win, but we were all captivated by Flake,” said judge and publisher David Campbell, while judge Sindhu Vee called the book “a rare joy: a laugh out loud story with characters you want to meet again and again”.

Like this father before him, Howard is an ice-cream van man – a master of his craft, with all the local knowledge and subtle skills:“Identifying the best places to stop. Sensing the optimum moment to switch on his signature tune. His ears were acutely attuned to the sound of children laughing. And, more importantly, the sound of children crying.” The idea of ice-cream turf wars being led by some sort of Mr Whippy Don is absolutely absurd and yet I was enraptured! Howard meandering his way through life, happy to do his crosswords, run his van on his patch and go home to his wife every day built up this really gentle, relatable character who you couldn't help but root for as his little van struggled to compete as the turf wars heated up. The supporting characters were just lovely, so humourous but with a real bond across them, and I thought this book brought Lancashire to life in such a wonderfully vivid way. Ep 138 is out! This is the drink we drank and the recipe is how you can make it if you wanna make it, and The Accidental is the book we read and talked about, along with many others. Listen, wherever you listen to such things! .But it’s in the quieter moments of Flake where Dooley reminds us of how nuanced a storyteller he is. Here it is what is left unsaid that ironically speaks the most eloquently about Howard and his struggles; in these gaps in between exposition and dialogue the core emotional truths of his situation hit home. Dooley communicates so much in these interludes about Howard’s existence and his relationship with his immediate environment through a sublime sense of pacing, character expression and body language. Here’s an example of Matthew Dooley’s sense of humour. A while ago, the 35-year-old graphic novelist realised that Mervyn King, the erstwhile governor of the Bank of England, shared his name not only with the world’s fourth-best darts player but also a high-ranking lawn and indoor bowler, whose day job was as a pest controller. DOOLEY: There are definitely some eccentric characters in flake, but I don’t think they are too far removed from reality. I hope people will recognise character traits of their own. Many of us, me included, are a bit strange and I think much of life is lived in that space between the weird and the boring. I’ve lost count of the days, months, years I’ve given over to quietly pottering around doing something or other that will never amount to much. I think the humanity comes from the fact that we are all caught up in our own small world, it seems massive to us but is all rather inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Thematically, it gels together well too: Howard and Tony’s rivalry is fueled in no small part by the fact Tony only exists because Howard’s father was bored by his life. The book seems to be telling us, when you live in a town where there’s barely anything to do, it can feel like you have nothing to lose, and be easy to overlook who you have in your life. The shadow of Howard’s dad, and everything wrong he represented with working class fathers of that era, looms large in the protagonist’s life.