"Say hello to Mr Wolfe." Rubbish cover, fun novel. I don't know what "Pynchonesque augury" is but while lapping that up the Baltimore Sun have completely missed that this is a wonderfully light and humourous tale with superb flights of fantasy. This is in no way a heritage pastiche or literary exercise; it's a meditation on creativity, if anything, but always undercut by the fantastic voice of the narrator and the bizarro cast of characters he runs into (including a “prognosticating turdologist” incarcerated in Bloomingdale's asylum for the insane). Hired to paint the portrait of a woman he’s not allowed to see, our perplexed hero has to gather impressions of her from the stories she tells. Meanwhile, on the streets of New York there’s a bug doing the rounds making women cry blood. Film this and you'd have plum walk-on parts for every character actor in the land. A cracking piece of entertainment.
