I’m reading another book that I’m really not enjoying at the moment (you should see a post about it tomorrow), so I’m giving myself a break.
Here is a perfect little book, short enough to read in an hour or so but every minute will be enjoyable. Maybe not every minute, there are some comedy scenes with drunken sailors that just aren’t funny, no matter how much I try to put myself in he right frame of mind.
The story is surprisingly straightforward: a banished aristocrat has been developing magic powers on his island for years after being deposed, and when his usurpers pass on their way back from a wedding in Tunis he shipwrecks them. Everything gets a bit confusing for them after that so when they finally meet he claims bck his title by doing nothing more than asking for it.
The drunken sailors get to be the kings they were plotting to become as all of the aristos, having forgiven each other with a bit of back-slapping and mutual congratulation, sail back to Italy. This plot sails by wrapped in beautiful verse and sentence so clear and rhythmic they jump off the page and sing at you to read them again, then again and again.
If you’re ever caught up in a boring novel that’s dragging on for what seems like months but you can’t give it up because you’re only on book 22 and it’s new year’s eve tomorrow (it’s a pretty specific circumstance, I realise, but it can happen), then pick up this book and remind yourself why you started reading in the first place.
