A relatively normal, if alcoholic, hero faces the most extraordinary and at times horrific situations with equally

extraordinary sang froid. It's a perfect recipe for slightly lunatic humour.

 

PEG

 

 

I highly recommend this entertaining novel. It's a sort of post-modern picaresque tale in which the narrator, dejected with his life in England, decides to go walking in France. From the minute he leaves home, his journey plunges him into surreal encounters with a host of extraordinary characters and events, some grotesque, some quaint, some hilarious. The narrative is interspersed with strange rhymes and songs and some of the humour arises from the way in which the narrator responds to all his adventures, however awful, with remarkable equanimity. The story is complex and ambitious but always intriguing.

 

JB