Flake

Product Information

Set in the fictional small seaside town of Dobbiston, Flake follows the life of ice-cream man Howard, who realises that the downturn in his business is a consequence of his half-brothers’s efforts to build his own ice-cream empire across the north-west. When a book opens with a man standing on top of an ice cream van slowly being submerged into the sea, the man seemingly accepting his fate, you're probably not expecting a book that is so absolutely brimming with the warmth and humour that this book absolutely was.

The colors are desaturated, veering towards gray tones, and the large amount of panels greatly reduces the pacing, building the sense of stillness (and perhaps loneliness) one may experience up north. The unhurried pacing lends the narration the sense of a documentary speaker, slowly remarking on the quirky stories of the inhabitants of Dobbiston, which gives every unexpected gag time to land. (You can almost imagine Emma Thompson or Stephen Fry doing the audiobook version, since the script has that quietly bemused tone.) Dooley is deft at employing a Chris Ware-like sense of ennui... Flake is principally comedic, comedic in the way that Magnus Mills is comedic or Wallace and Gromit... We will watch to see what he does next with baited breath. * Bookmunch * 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”. DOOLEY: It is very straightforward. I pencil and ink on paper, then scan and add colour, word balloons and letters on Photoshop. Matthew Dooley at his London home: ‘I like people or characters who are obsessed by something.’ Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

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. Jasper’s overriding priorities, however, are his pet peeves, each as irrelevant to any sane human being as they are uncompromisingly and passionately pursued. For example, he spent six months in a French prison for trying to convert continental road signs from metric to imperial then painting his results on their signposts. So he’s averse neither to direct confrontation nor overt vandalism, which may well come in handy during the imminent North-West English Ice Cream Wars.(It doesn’t.) Flake tells the story of two rival ice-cream men: Howard, who is meek and happiest hiding in his van doing the crossword; and Tony Augustus – Howard’s half-brother, as it happens – who is intent on building an empire across the region. It is set in the 1980s in the fictional town of Dobbiston, though Dooley admits that it shares much in common with Ormskirk, Lancashire, where he grew up. ANDY OLIVER: So let’s start with a congratulations for your much deserved Eisner Awards nomination. As someone who is no stranger to awards/competition recognition how did this latest accolade feel?

AO: How much of a game-changer for you was winning the 2016 Cape/Observer/Comica Short Story Prize for ‘Colin Turnbull: A Tall Story’ (above)? 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. David Campbell, judge and publisher of Everyman’s Library, commented: "This year’s shortlist was especially strong with a number of very credible potential winners. We had none of us, I think, expected a graphic novel to win, but we were all captivated by Flake."But Howard’s rivalry with Tony has a more personal element. Because this predatory purveyor of frozen taste sensations, who is determined to put him out of business and claim Howard’s father’s patch for his own, is also secretly his half-brother… 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." Matthew Dooley has won the 2020 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with his graphic novel Flake (Jonathan Cape). Matthew Dooley will be awarded a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année, and a complete set of the Everyman’s Library P G Wodehouse collection. The award is normally presented at the Hay Festival, which was cancelled this year owing to the coronavirus pandemic. There’s overt optimism at work in the narrative – in Howard’s quietly contented marriage, in his small kindnesses, and his friendships, and in the series of events that lead to the happy ending. From the group of friends gathering together to support him after Tony’s machinations turn nasty – prompting scenes of collective endeavour so recognisable from romcoms – to the growing success of his new ice cream (‘It didn’t take long for word to spread..’), these are unabashedly ‘feelgood’ tropes.