Yes, The Chef, the Bird and the Blessing (just released in eformat with paperback to follow in August) is not a 'serious' novel, what with the quirky voice of the narrator, his reclusive employer, Mr Bin, and his visionary wife who prophesies a future of electric gates and marble porticos. A comedy? Even a farce?

And yet ... it's also a story that touches on the power of suppressed memory, on the meaning of friendship and on our relationship with the natural world. In these serious times, perhaps we need weighty subjects to be floating lightly in a pool of reading escape.