A Murder Of Crowleys?

It’s been a good year for Catherine O’Flynn, folks. Not only did she scoop the Costa Award for best debut novel, she also won the Waterstone’s Newcomer of the Year in the Nibbies. Now comes the news that … oh, let’s allow the Irish Film and Television Network wallahs to tell it, shall we?

BAFTA and IFTA winning Irish director John Crowley (Boy A, Intermission) is attached to direct the screen adaptation of Catherine O’Flynn’s award winning novel WHAT WAS LOST. WHAT WAS LOST is the debut novel for Catherine O’Flynn. Published in January 2007, the book was longlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the Orange Prize for Fiction and won the prestigious First Novel prize at the Costa Book Awards in January 2008. The story centres upon the disappearance of a young girl in 1984 and the people who continue the search for her twenty years later. The Heyday Films / Film Four co-production is in the early stages of development with ‘Harry Potter’ producer David Heyman and co-producer Rosie Alison (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) behind optioning the project. A screenwriter is now being sought to adapt the story for the big screen.

Insert your own religious-themed punchline here, incorporating some or all of the phrases ‘WHAT WAS LOST now is found’, ‘the LOST shall be the first’, and ‘LOST soul redeemed’ …

On WHAT WAS LOST, And Losers

Sinead over at the very fine Sigla Blog has been raving about Catherine O’Flynn’s Costa Award-winning WHAT WAS LOST for some time now, but even though O’Flynn is second-generation Irish we didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon in case the novel was a literary effort (given it won a literary prize) that simply utilised crime tropes, an issue that has unduly exercised the elves of CAP Towers over the last few weeks. However, with Mark Lawson in The Guardian claiming WHAT WAS LOST as a mystery story, and Karen Meek reviewing it at Euro Crime, it’s starting to look like WHAT WAS LOST is due some very belated and entirely useless congratulations from the CAP crew. Three cheers, two stools and a resounding huzzah, then … Incidentally, O’Flynn was one of four women to scoop a prize at the Costa Book Awards, and the utter absence of disgruntled men complaining about the (non-)issue stands in stark contrast to the outcry about the lack of women nominated for the Edgar’s ‘Best Novel’ category, if this Sarah Weinman-sponsored thread is anything to go by. Are men better losers than women? Or just losers, period? Answers on the back of a used €20 note to the usual address, please …