I’ve never been a Stephen King reader, so the fact his name appears on a back-cover blurb (‘Kept me up most of the night!‘) didn’t influence the purchase. But we finally have a real bookstore in this town, the bookstore even stocks English-language titles in English, and I like to read some of the current big-sale productions. Hence, my purchase of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train. First thriller, ten million copies sold thus far (ten million, plus one at the very least). Translated in forty languages and The Times’ ‘vote for unreliable narrator of the year‘.

And well done too. No, it didn’t keep me up most of the night but then, I’m not Stephen King. I’ve some ninety pages to go to discover the clincher, the one clue leading to the one and only truth. A good thriller works the way any good riddle does. It teases the brain. You want to know. You need to know. Once you know? Game over, on to something else.

I like good craftsmanship. Plus, I’m still on school break. Can organize my time as I see fit.

***

The pink umbrellas over main street are starting to wilt, I guess good craftsmanship isn’t the main point to the display. I don’t know how much the umbrella-maker rakes in with the  yearly campaign but it must be a good thing. I see the umbrellas in every town I visit, these days. They’re supposed to alert to the need for breast exams. Does a display of pink umbrellas trigger the urge in droves of women to sign up for mammographies? (Insert a dubious look here).  Congrats anyway to the umbrella makers at the umbrella factory: do they feel the need for blue-tinted glasses at the end of the production run?

Back to my unpublished-writer world I go. Envious? No. Anxious to write one that leaves me feeling I couldn’t possibly do a better job with the material I had on hand. One that might even trigger that feeling in a few readers scrounged together by a dedicated agent and a foolhardy publisher.

Faith? Hope? Both blind, by definition.

***

School break makes for a slow small town. Looks like the handful of restaurant owners make a run for it and I can’t say I blame them. Methinks I’ll have to skip town again for a taste of someone else’s cooking and a look at different front doors. But with everything shut down on Mondays, plus next Tuesday an official holiday, it’s good luck to finding vast and exciting vistas outside any I might whip up inside my own head.

Allez? Allez.