Parrot

Over the last week I have had occasion to read real live newspapers. Paper and ink.

During an airplane ride, a long wait for a meeting and this morning over coffee.

In all of these newspapers there has been a glowing book review for a new effort by someone called Favel (sic) Parrot (sic). Clearly a nom de clavier.

The articles were all accompanied by a photo of the parrot; a red-haired inner-city slightly-plumpish gen Y.

Today’s review suggested that this novel (sic) is ‘partly the tale of two now-distant childhoods’. Sounds riveting eh!

In fact the reviews themselves were mostly unreadable so I can’t give you any more info.

Other than this pearler of a summary: ‘ … is a novel whose economy of scale cannot disguise the ambition of a skilled and determined writer’.

I don’t know about you but I read this as:  ‘it’s a shortish story by a hard working but talentless writer.’

One does wonder why any publisher would spend so much effort in an attempt to get people to do what they aren’t going to do.

Maybe there’s a hypothesis that people stuck in old-school broadcast media are easier to fool. This is probably true.

My guess is that some deluded publisher, probably the parrot’s father, is dreaming of soggy red carpet. Hence the ‘parrot’.

I predict that they will shift 100 copies or so, mostly to friends and family, unless, unbeknownst to this anti-reviewer, the parrot has spiced it up with some vampire sex.