Yeah, this was another No. It had a certain 'Mardi Gras' quality about it clearly - it reflected part of the life of New Orleans for sure. But it just seemed too... chirpy. Chipper. Like those morning breakfast shows that, despite reporting the death of howevermany people in somedisastersomewhere, remain relentlessly upbeat. A distinct lack of gravitas in other words. And we need some of that sobriety when packaging a book that, whilst containing a lot of fantastic humour, deals a lot with mechanisms of coping with loss. Once we get past all the spangly packaging stuff I'll talk more about the multifarious issues the book raises- the heart / essence that gets me so passionate about this particular work of fiction and makes me want the world to read it, the work of this, I don't know, modern Mark Twain. Wait 'til you meet Willie - you'll see what I mean.
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