Caleb Klaces - Mr Outside

We are absolutely delighted to announce that Caleb Klaces will be coming to talk about his novel, 'Mr Outside', in conversation with Anna Metcalfe. This event will be at The Heath Bookshop. 

Caleb will be in conversation for around an hour. There will be a book signing afterwards.

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.  

Mr Outside

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 understand each other and let go.

Told through a striking combination of text and image, Klaces’ distilled novel explores the stories we tell about our lives, the limits of intimacy, 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.

Mr Outside follows on from Klaces’ acclaimed debut novel, Fatherhood. Where Fatherhood was focused on the beginning of a life, Mr Outside is interested in the end; where Fatherhood was a hybrid of poetry and prose, Mr Outside draws on images, situating itself in a lineage that includes Susan Sontag, John Berger, Javier Marias, WG Sebald. The novel’s pared-back prose is inspired by the distilled intensity of Annie Ernaux’s A Woman’s Story, Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter, and Natasha Brown’s Assembly.

Anna Metcalfe is a writer and lecturer in Creative Writing. Her short stories have been published in Lighthouse, The Dublin Review and Granta, shortlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award and the Bridport Prize and collected in her first book Blind Water Pass. Her debut novel, Chrysalis, was published in 2023, the same year she was named as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. She teaches writing at the University of Birmingham  

We look forward to seeing you. 

Catherine & Claire