Lit-lite

What’s the lightest, most “fluff” kind of book you’ve read recently?

Funny you should ask, I tend to like my reading rich, I'm not big on fluff, but I have just been reading The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar. I think it was recommended on Neil Gaiman's blog but, to be honest, I don't remember. Gaiman is certainly all over this book. He wrote the introduction. It says so on the front cover. They quote the introduction on the back cover. The marketing placqarded all over this book feels a bit desperate. Any any rate, The Good Fairies is in the urban fantasy genre, think Charles de Lint only more jaded, or think Neil Gaiman, actually, only with more laugh lines, and with lots of kilts and Irish and Scottish reels thrown in. It is an amusing book, occasionally very funny, and I tore through most of its 200-odd pages in a single day, but there's not a lot to it. It's definitely lit-lite.

Dinnie, an overweight enemy of humanity, was the worst violinist in New York, but was prcticing gamely when two cute little fairies stumbled through his fourth-floor window and vomited on the carpet.

"Sorry," said one.

"Don't worry," said the other. "Fairy vomit is no doubt sweet-smelling to humans."

By this time, however, Dinnie was halfway down the stairs, and still accelerating.

"Two fairies just came through my window and were sick on the carpet!" he screamed on reaching Fourth Street, not fully realizing the effect that this would have on the passers-by till the men sweating with sacks round a garbage truck stopped to laugh at him.

"What'd you say?"

"Upstairs, gasped Dinned. "Two fairies, with kilts and violins and little swords...green kilts..."

It turns out there are Scottish fairies, black fairies, Italian fairies - who knew? - and they are always feuding with one another, and most of them are musicians, and there's a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream going on, bag ladies who are into classical Greek, a flower that keeps falling into the wrong hands. It's a romp, and once in a while I'm in the mood for light entertainment. I have been known to read a pulpish thriller or two in my time, often right after final exams or the opening of a show.