Spring Tides: Read with Warm Feet

This could very well be the first book review I've done where you've probably never heard of the book in question.  I got it on the recommendation of the proprietor of Different Drummer Books in Burlington.  It is my favourite book store by a long shot and I've been meaning to blog about it for some time.  I digress.  This book is a translation from the original French and the translation is published by Archipelago Books in the States.  The copy I got was oddly shaped and had the most pleasing textured cover you've ever seen.  It might be a bold thing to produced a book differently, but I don't think it's gimmicky, and it's is in perfect keeping with the insides.  This is one of those books with both feet in the Allegory river, with the absurd always peeking in through the windows, testing the locks from time to time and stealing food left unattended.  I shall make every effort to describe the book without revealing spoilers, in spite, or because it's really not the sort of book you could spoil that way.

The point is, that's not the point.

Our main character is a partially infirm translator of comic strips (word play is a distraction in some chapters, entertaining and all the more commendably so because its an English translation of a French novel about translating English Comics into French) who at the bequest of his well-meaning patron lives alone on an island on the St. Lawrence with a cat and a Tennis Machine named "The Prince".  Because the millionaire owner understands his employee to be unhappy he sends a number of people, each one more archetypical and disruptive than the last, to cheer him up.

Equal parts Kafka and Wes Anderson, but pleasant at all times even when it comes to breaking a few eggs in the name of progress.  The imagery is layered and at times accusatory, but playfully so, the way you picture an funny uncle poking a snotty niece until she giggles.

I've mentioned it before, but I am going to great lengths to read indy lit this year (Canada reads notwithstanding) and if this is any indication of the stuff I've been missing, I'm obliged to burn down nearest Indigo (perhaps I'll start a facebook group, perhaps not).  So I cannot recommend this book highly enough, it's a warm blanket that's sad and comfortable and lovely.  I'm quite sure I'm a better person for having read this book, though the improvement is certainly an immeasurable and trivial quality.