KEY POINTS:
Probably the size of this little novel says it all: sweet, capable of sitting inside a handbag. It's nicely produced, a hardback with something of the fashion magazine about it.
Its story is simple. Over 131 pages, a husband and wife come to terms - elegantly - with a terminal illness. They don't have children. They do, however, have savoir faire. This tiny novel is littered with labels, places. It's a perfume counter of a novel.
The husband, suffering an unnamed illness, decides to travel in his last months to places pertaining to the alphabet. P is for Paris, for example. D for Deauville. I was about to say Dullsville. But that would be cruel to this light puff of a Sunday supplement novel.
Everything is frantically well-mannered and urbane. They are London professionals. She works for the third most-loved fashion magazine in London.
He, unbelievably, works in advertising. The End of the Alphabet skates lightly over dark material, which must be the recipe for its success. It was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. It is being published in eight different languages worldwide.
The author is a book designer. It certainly is a most cunning concept - the wee novel, the slim volume, with its elegant traceries of slightly unbelievable grief and anger.
The truest moments in this novel come in the final page - when, in a cascade of thanks, C.S. Richardson bows gracefully to all those elegant Londoners, full of savoir faire, who helped puff this really very inconsequential short story into a highly successful best-selling item - a cunning little piece of merchandise.
The End of the Alphabet
By C.S. Richardson (Portobello Books $28)
* Peter Wells is a Hawkes Bay writer.
