1. It is impossible for me to sum up this book. I’ll have to sneak up on it from behind it instead. But know this it shines like a gilded symbolist triumph in the desert of the real.
2. It’s high time for a Pie Time.
3. Mano thought that death wasn’t a thing to fight, but a thing to be ready for. He thought that if we could all just be ready for it, it could be beautiful. (page 125).
4. Like the best of dreams, a lot of the book’s uncanny goings-on are left unexplained. You’re gonna have to embrace the inexplicable with this one.
5. The characters in this book have some fantastic names. Here is a sample: Inez Roar and her daughter Zuzu Roar, Nana Pine, Pepe Let and his mother Mitzi Let and the best-named priest in all of literature – Father Mothers.
6. Schomburg has a style that turns Hemingway on his head. By the looks of them, these are simple sentences. And yet they are anything but – there is a depth to them – like a pure bell being rung.
7. As culinary accompaniment I’m gonna recommend a Steak and Ale Pie.
8. The War on Death, Mano thought, was not a war at all, but a milking. It was a way to milk death for what it was worth, instead of loving it for what it had to be. (page 158).
9. Really at the heart of the book is how small-town life (with its close knit social relations and familiarity with death) becomes the life of the city (where those relations are far and few between and death is held at arm’s length).
10. How can you not like a book with a river called the Cure and a town called Nun’s Hat in it?
11. This book is wonderfully self-contained. It reminded me of several films but this one in particular.
12. Why not get to know Mr. Schomburg better by visiting his web page? (Psst – He also writes poems).

12.5 Buy