Mr Outside
£12.00
Caleb Klaces
During a time of restricted movement, the narrator of Mr Outside visits his reclusive father Thomas who is packing up to move into a care home. As father and son grapple with the task, long-buried conflicts resurface. Thomas, a poet and former radical priest, slips between affection and fear, while the narrator struggles to find the words he’s been holding back. Yet amidst confusion and grief, moments of humour and connection emerge, as both men discover new ways to listen.
Told through a striking combination of text and image, Klaces’ distilled novel explores the stories we tell about our lives, intimacy in crisis, and the fragile line between reality and delusion. Based on the life of his own father, Mr Outside is poignant, profound, and unexpectedly funny; a tender meditation on endings, the limits of understanding, and the act of letting go.
‘I was utterly absorbed by this riveting, wonderful book, and thought about little else during the days I read it. The prose is unsparing – clear yet enigmatic, clipped yet voluminous. Every page carries a startling moment or detail. By the end of it, you’re left with a sense of the turbulence and bewildering beauty of a whole life. Mr Outside is a major achievement.’ – Martin MacInnes
Publishes 16 October; available to pre-order
Description
During a time of restricted movement, the narrator of Mr Outside visits his reclusive father Thomas who is packing up to move into a care home. As father and son grapple with the task, long-buried conflicts resurface. Thomas, a poet and former radical priest, slips between affection and fear, while the narrator struggles to find the words he’s been holding back. Yet amidst confusion and grief, moments of humour and connection emerge, as both men discover new ways to listen.
Told through a striking combination of text and image, Klaces’ distilled novel explores the stories we tell about our lives, intimacy in crisis, and the fragile line between reality and delusion. Based on the life of his own father, Mr Outside is poignant, profound, and unexpectedly funny; a tender meditation on endings, the limits of understanding, and the act of letting go.
‘I can’t remember the last time a book moved me to tears, but Mr Outside did so more than once. With each page awash in bittersweet detail, Klaces evokes the raw and distant intimacy between fathers and sons with tenderness and insight and captures the inevitable yet cataclysmic rupture of the loss of a parent as honestly and effectively as anything I’ve ever read. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful and comforting all at once. I could not recommend it more highly.’ – Kevin Powers
‘I was utterly absorbed by this riveting, wonderful book, and thought about little else during the days I read it. The prose is unsparing – clear yet enigmatic, clipped yet voluminous. Every page carries a startling moment or detail. By the end of it, you’re left with a sense of the turbulence and bewildering beauty of a whole life. Mr Outside is a major achievement.’ – Martin MacInnes
Praise for Fatherhood:
‘A brilliant, charming, and weirdly alarming poem-novel about the time-bending strangeness of being a parent. I love Caleb Klaces’ writing.’ – Max Porter
‘This writing is fierce and gorgeous. It is an antidote to ennui, the opposite of despair. I have never read something so alive.’ – Katharine Kilalea
Caleb Klaces is the author of the novel Fatherhood, which won a Northern Writers Award and was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and the poetry collections Away From Me and Bottled Air, which won an Eric Gregory Award and the Melita Hume Prize. He grew up in Birmingham.
