Joao Reis – författare

One of the funniest novels you are likely to read, which you will particularly appreciate if you have the perverse nature of a Beckett lover, or have come across David Vardeman's books, Bedraggling Grandma with Russian Snow is a book of precision taken to torturous limits of hilarity. Sure a woman has been murdered and the eye witness is a talking, thinking, reading stuffed donkey, but it is not entirely absurd, for it suggests a number of human truths like a short electric cut through Wittgenstein, who plays a role in the novel that begins with the sheer absurd and ends with a more elevated absurd, you odd and Cartesian human reader.

A book that can be read in one sitting, it is also a book that you will read at least three times if you do race through it in a sitting. Perhaps you should read it standing. Standing and leaning? Well, that would allow some leg flexing, yes. But isn't your concentration sharper if you are sitting? And though your legs stretch less, is the trade-off between less stretching worth it for the rest they have in not supporting your body? And which is better for your head? Sitting, as you can rest your face in your hands? Or standing, which allows better back to head stretching? What if someone enters the room? Why did they? Did they intend to interrupt your reading of Bedraggling Grandma with Russian Snow? If not, why did they interrupt your reading of Bedraggling Grandma with Russian Snow? For they did, indeed, interrupt your reading of Bedraggling Grandma with Russian Snow. Would they have felt less free to do so if you were standing? Does sitting invite interruption?

These are questions you will not think to ask until after you realized that you have been slyly taught how to think by this Portuguese master of humor, philosophy, and imagination, João Reis.

"I'm sorry for diverting from the main issue, dear gentlemen, but as you know, every single detail might be of importance, life and occurrences are a perfect sphere, no angles and no end, you are detectives and surely understand why I can't leave all the connecting dots and wires and cables and threads lying around out there untouched unseen unheard."