What a weird little book. This has been sitting on my TBR since 2020 when Arthurson was supposed to be one of the featured authors at that years Writers Fest. I finally picked up a copy at the library and read it in one afternoon. It’s less than one hundred pages so really a novella. In 99 pages there’s enough space to set up a mystery but not enough space to leave me with anything but endless questions.
Our narrator, M, is a bylaw officer. While issuing a warning at a yard sale one day, he notices a red chesterfield abandoned in a nearby ditch. It’s a nice piece of furniture but when he looks closer, he finds a shoe sticking out of. Unfortunately, when he grabs hold of the shoe, M. finds there is still a foot within.
It doesn’t take long before M is a “person of interest” in a murder investigation. Adding to that, his older brother, K, is involved in some shady political dealings, and that yard sale might just be being run by Russian gangsters. And M just can’t stay away from that red chesterfield.
(A note: I believe chesterfield may be a term more broadly used in Canada. Essentially, a chesterfield is a type of sofa. I know exactly what is referred to when someone says “chesterfield” but I have a hard time describing it. It’s a specific type of sofa, generally well-structured, maybe with sturdy wooden arms. Comfortable and old-fashioned. When I think chesterfield, I think old plaid cushions in my grandmother’s basement.)
The book’s blurb tells me that this is a story that “upends tropes and traditions of crime fiction”. Maybe I don’t read enough crime fiction to quite get this one. I could see a lot of the tropes – gangsters, doppelgangers, civilians mixed up in criminal cases for no discernible reason. But I didn’t feel like this story really said much about those tropes. It creates this whole situation, alludes at all kinds of complications, and then…ends. By the last page I wasn’t sure if any of it had really happened or if M really existed. If this had been longer and more fleshed out or if it had been shorter and tighter, I think I would have left more satisfied. As it is, I’m just not sure exactly what I read.
Karissa Reads Books 
Thank you for sharing your cogent opinion Karissa. Now you can move on to more important opinions lying untold in your TBR pile. I really appreciate your efforts on behalf of the rest of us.
Thank you for reading!
This kind of book drives me absolutely nuts. I like to think that maybe one day, when I’m a grownup, I’ll get them.
Haha, I just now accept that this is not a book for me but maybe it is for some other reader out there.
Oh, yes! Let a thousand flowers bloom, as they say.
LOL, this sounds like some of the absurdist Nordic fiction I’ve read, like the one about an employee who starts at a wall because he thinks there’s a room there, but no one else sees it. I will say, I giggled when I read about the severed foot because for some reason, the two of us keep crossing paths with content related to shoes with feet (an no bodies) in them! What are the chances?
It kind of is – like that weird book I read where the protagonist is obsessed with her office printer. Severed feet is a weird theme!
You should hear me in real life: “My friend Karissa sent me the Wikipedia page to a whole shore in Canada on which feet in shoes wash up on the shores regularly!”
Hahaha! That makes me sound so weird! (But also, very on brand for who I am because I love weird facts and stories.)
I remember hearing about this book when it came out and thinking I should read it because it was published by the U of C Press (I’m always trying to support our local publishing industry, especially because it’s so small!) but I never got around to it. Sounds like I didn’t miss much! haha
I read it in an afternoon so it wouldn’t be a huge commitment if you did decide to read it!