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Like many before me, I got to know this by watching Jim Jarmusch' movie 'Paterson' (which I really, really loved). This is not the kind of book you try to read in a few days or even weeks, that would be - according to me, that is - daft.

In some ways it feels a bit like a cross between Dylan Thomas' 'Under milk wood' and Belgian poet Paul Van Ostaijen. As you read, your mind begins to hear a continuous chatter of different voices. The feeling like you're walking through a city and you start to pick up pieces of conversation in bars, stations, railway stations, ... Some people talk gossip, some people are worrying about their relationships.

If you try to listen to all these voices at the same time, the result is gobbledygook. But if you pick up this book from time to time, you can come across lines like:

'Love is like a kitten, a pleasant thing, a purr and a pounce. Chases a piece of string, a scratch and a mew/a ball batted with a paw/a sheated claw'

or

'The place sweats of staleness and of rot/a library stench/It is summer!/Stinking summer/Escape from it - but not by running away. Not by 'composition'. Embrace the foulness'

I'll be picking up 'Paterson' a lot in the future.