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As I turned to the last page of this novel I emitted a groan. That was it?! Noooo�. Mr Portis, where’s the next 100 pages? It’s so short�.I was having so much fun, what happened? Did you get kidnapped half way through? So this is a terrific deadpan tale of how Norwood Pratt, a man who knows all about car engines and their problems in great detail, tries and fails and stumbles and recovers and woozily lunges through a brief section of his life that involves hot cars, an intelligent chicken, an elegant person of restricted stature, a garrulous eccentric, an uncouth brother in law and an unceasing flow of wry comedy about low level American life in the late 50s, mostly rural but with an unhappy spell in New York.

Charles Portis is famous for True Grit which is a masterpiece and not so famous for his other four novels. So this is the third I have read, the other one being The Dog of the South, which is also great and also a road trip story featuring a man who knows about car engines and their problems in great detail, a garrulous eccentric�. Wait ! I now realise Charles Portis rewrote the same novel multiple times, like how Neil Young rewrites the same song a jillion times. But it’s okay, so long as the novel you keep rewriting is this funny and sweet and pure.

Recommended…but heck, it’s out of print. Amazon is only selling a French translation at the moment. But you can find it in the Library of America’s collected works volume, which is where I had to find it.