This is a funny, playful book. It most definitely does not seem like it should be. It starts with a nameless narrator looking for a stuffed parrot. I know, I know. But specifically it’s the parrot that the French writer Flaubert used as inspiration while writing his short story “A Simple Heart”, which I also read before starting this. This parrot, we are led to believe, sat on the desk having been borrowed from a museum until Flaubert became so annoyed and frustrated by it […]