Received in a box of books from appaloosatb!

"A Sport and a Pastime is an astonishing performance, the classic novel from a remarkable writer whose sentences bristle with a singular passion. Salter chronicles a love affair between a young shopgirl and an American college dropout against the backdrop of provincial France. The narrator's cool distillation of events-real or imagined-makes the book both lyrical and tightly, dangerously pitched."

Listed on paperbackswap.com

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Mailing to a paperbackswap.com member in N. Billerica, Ma!!

Received this from a paperbackswap.com member. I started reading it ages ago, and ended up setting it aside. I'll be releasing it to one of the Little Free Libraries soon. Hope the next reader enjoys it!

Enjoy!

I was pleased to find this BC book in the LFL when I stopped by today to drop off some books of my own. [Waving hi to the previous journalers!] This one sounds intriguing - and I like the breezy cover-art from David Hockney's "Grand Hotel-Vittel".

Later: The writing style's interesting here, staccato in places but quite evocative: "This blue, indolent town. Its cats. Its pale sky." The narrator doesn't tell his own story much, and indeed says "it's a story of things that never existed" - his main interest is in describing the affair of an American, a dropout from Yale, and a young French shopgirl, as their paths cross that of the narrator. [Unless he's the Yale dropout himself - though some scenes suggest he's a different person.] The American turns out to be rather hapless, usually out of funds and finding ways to finagle money out of others - not the most sympathetic character. The descriptions of his relationship with the young woman include lots of sex scenes, told with the kind of mundane detail that reminded me of Lady Chatterley's Lover.

At the end of the book the narrator receives news of the American - suggesting again that he's a different person, though with comments that make it unclear how accurate the narrator has been about him this whole time. Very... odd book!

Guidelines for safely visiting and stocking Little Free Libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the LFL site here.

I left this book in the Little Free Library ornamented with white squirrels (in honor of the actual white squirrels that live in the area); hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in MA here.]

*** Released for the 2020 Tick Tock challenge. ***

*** Released for the 2020 Keep Them Moving challenge. ***