love and other near-death experiences

Long ago Roofshadow asked what I wanted for Christmas and I directed her to my Amazon wish list. Very handy things they are ~ I'd ordered off hers in the past and it's fun to send something you know a person will like for sure. I had no idea which item she'd sent and basically forgot about the whole thing...

until last week when one of Mil Millington's novels arrived in the post. Meeeeerrry Christmas! I've wanted to read Mil's novels, having been a fan of his website (and newsletter) Things my girlfriend and I have argued about for a long time. From what I've read his first two novels are funnier than this one. All I can say is that they must be pretty funny, because this has me laughing out loud. I'm about halfway through and in no rush to finish because I'm enjoying it too much.

The premise is actually quite interesting. Rob (the main character) is supposed to meet a jazz musician for an interview. His fiance insists that he take back some crappy towels that he bought on special, and he makes the seemingly unimportant decision to do it on the way to the interview instead of on the way back. As a result he gets caught in traffic and isn't there when an oil tanker ploughs into the hotel and kills everyone, including the guy he was to meet. From there he becomes mentally paralysed every time it comes to making seemingly inconsequential decisions (one of the funniest scenes in the book so far is one where he is trying to decide whether to use a blue pen or a black pen to fill in a form). Because a minor decision had such a huge impact (saving his life) he now feels like any minor decision could mean the difference between life and death, but because the decision is by definition minor, he has no way of judging which decision would be best.

The book is so visual, I can see it all as I read it. it makes me wonder how long it's going to be before someone decides to make one of his novels into a movie.