"A Short History of a Small Place"

[fiefoe]

The book meanders on merrily. Hilarity is almost always tangled with fatality, be it that of the ducks over Mr Alton's pond at the hands of Gottliebs, or a cowlicked Guinea pig named Artemus Gordon.

Some fine turns of phrase:

• the man who caused her hormones to slip into their tap shoes
• news of (his ex-wife's pregnancy) unloosed an emotional gulleywash on Mr. Alton's features. He...even left off being purely reasonably dashing... could well have eroded clean down to homely.
  
• There is something about standing on a cool cement slab under the stars that breeds romance like mosquitoes.
• Though Mr Zeno carried the load bravely, ... he finally yielded to the accumulated weight of informed medical opinion and expired. There was really nothing else he could do.
• (Rev. Hamilton's sermon on life as roses:) after that final freeze they will all burst into magnificent bloom in the Ming vase of eternity.
• inestimably wealthy with chins