Flake

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Last year his debut graphic novel Flake, a tale of warring ice cream men, was published by Jonathan Cape and went on to be Eisner Award-nominated this year. I caught up with Matthew to talk about small press community, shared universes, and launching Flake in a pandemic year… DOOLEY: I have a few ideas that are gently percolating. Hopefully one or more of those will end up as another graphic novel. I’m working on something shorter, but hopefully no less interesting, for my first time tabling at Thought Bubble… thank god for a deadline! FLAKE is the first graphic novel to win the prize in its 20 year history. Judge Sindhu Vee describes it as ‘a rare joy: a laugh out loud story with characters you want to meet again and again,’ Dooley’s debut Flake tells the comic tale of ice cream wars and sibling rivalry. Described by The Observer as a meld of Alan Bennett and graphic novelist Chris Ware, Flake combines clever detail, warm characters and a good handful of puns.

FLAKE is as smart as it is delicious, as it is very, very British. Raymond Briggs and Alan Bennett are both reflected in the cast, their environment and their quotidian observations about their parochial environment: pride in local history, the surprising complexities buried within family history, and the absurdities which can come to dominate any life; the traps therein. Matthew Dooley won the Observer Graphic Short Story Prize and his debut FLAKE, published by Cape in 2020, went on to win the Wodehouse Bollinger Prize, the first time for a graphic novel. It was also a Guardian Book of the Year. Victoria Carfantan, director of Champagne Bollinger - UK, says: ‘We are very proud of our long-standing relationship supporting the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. It is such an important award celebrating some of the most talented names in the genre and I am delighted to extend my congratulations to Matthew Dooley and his novel, Flake, as this year’s winner.’ 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? In Flake, Dooley’s ability to place the abruptly incongruous within the banal and the unremarkable proves once again to be the greatest strength of his comedic approach. He takes a traditional narrative structure as a starting point and then peppers it with anecdotal sidesteps about the residents and history of Howard’s home town Dobbiston that allow him to exercise the more extravagant parts of his imagination.

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AO: I really felt for you last year when the pandemic hit just before Flake was published and you missed all the customary book launches and events. How have you had to adapt to promoting Flake over the 16 months? MATTHEW DOOLEY: This came as a huge surprise… particularly as I found out via a WhatsApp group I’m in with some other comic creators! Obviously when making Flake I didn’t set out with the intention of being nominated for any awards but it is enormously gratifying to have your work recognised in that way. 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. With the current situation not allowing for a physical pig at Hay Festival this year, Dooley has drawn his own humorous interpretation, with himself sat on the pig, bottle of Bollinger in hand. He’ll be joining a long line of witty winners from the past two decades, including Helen Fielding, Ian McEwan, Terry Pratchett and Nina Stibbe. AO: Throwaway Press published your original solo collections of work in Meanderings and The Practical Implications of Immortality, and you’ve also self-published Catastrophising. The absurdist slice-of-life humour of those collections where the incongruous is embedded into the everyday gives them a very distinctive flavour. What most appeals to you about that kind of fantasy autobio approach? And is there something almost cathartic about the self-deprecating way you present yourself in your strips? MacDowell, James, Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema, Cliché, Convention and the Final Couple. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; 2013.

Matthew Dooley has won the 2020 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with his graphic novel Flake (Jonathan Cape).

Retailers:

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. 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)?