Books

"What book are you reading at present?"

This was one of the questions I was asked at my first job interview when I was fifteen.
It was Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. "Right, I've got just the job for you," said
the man. I was to start work that same afternoon. After being rigged out in my first
pair of long trousers, I packed a bag with a change of new clothes I'd been given and
told to catch a bus to a distant city. Arriving there, I was led to a dingy scullery at
the back of a grand hotel where my job was to wash all the greasy dishes and pans.
Just the sort of thing for a young nonentity. I stayed there until the place closed at
the end of the Summer Season.
The book I'm reading now is Dominique Saint-Alban's L'enfant des Quatre Vents.
This authoress has a distinct style of her own and, it seems to me, is at great pains
to show how clever she can be about it.
Not a book aimed at the bottom end of the nonentities market!