Book Club at the Counter

and Henry Roderick Payne is telling the Barista about the latest book just finished, in his unfailing attempt to get her to read ("I do read," she told him a few days ago, "I read every text message ever sent to me!" - then she smiled coyly and sauntered away, while he bled out all over his mocha grande):

"The Lighthouse, the Cat, and the Sea, subtitled A something Fable, but told from the point of view of a thirty-year-old cat - God I love cat narrators! It goes from the birth on the boat to different characters of the shipmates . . . and I swear the mariners were just like the characters on the flying pirate boat from Stardust - did you ever see Stardust?"

"Actually, I did," the Barista says. "Loved it! Absolutely loved it."

Verble says, "That's right - that was one of those movies that someone tells you to watch and you think 'Ah I've got nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon but kill a few hours until sundown' and it suddenly slaps you over the head and plants itself in your top twenty favorites."

"Exactly what I thought when I saw it," says the Barista. "Didn't expect much, but it's fantastic!"

"This book will give you the same kind of feeling," Payne says, "because it has the same sweetness, kindness, decency - a little suspense, a little danger, but nothing truly malevolent. It's also set in Key West, and you can tell that the writer lives there, just based on the loving depiction of the island and the way of life there - even though it's set back at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries."

"But you say it's told from the point of view of the cat?" asks Verble incredulously.

"It works," says Payne. "It really works. Listen, it'd take you maybe an evening or two to read it. This is definitely one of those books that will leave you feeling all warm inside, like a cup of hot chocolate on a stormy evening. And who knows," he says, with an offhand wave in the Barista's direction, "maybe they'll make it into a movie, like Stardust."

"Then I can wait for it then," she says, with a wink and a smile.