Value Village has cottoned onto the value of used books and rarely will you find a paperback for under $3.99. When I came upon a spine that read: R.K NARAYAN THE PAINTER OF SIGNS, with the little Penguin logo up top, I withdrew it out of curiosity (an unfamiliar author, an intriguing title, a familiar and trusted publisher).
Christopher Brown's banal yet colourful cover did little for me, nor did the semi-colon in the first sentence of the text, which is something I never do in my own writing for reasons I am never sure of and can only explain as aesthetic.
But I read on, and soon enough I was under the spell of the sign painter and his story (he is a rationalist, a modern, while those around him are superstitious and addicted to the commands of their astrologers). A wry and funny book (so far).
