unearths some literary gems.
[I abandoned this book early on, but not before enjoying a scene in which the protagonists, a pair of chess-playing ghosts, find their game repeatedly disrupted as the living family who inhabit their house, and who cannot see either the ghosts or their chessboard, keep sitting down on the board or otherwise scattering the pieces.
Also: PARROTS!]
***
Miss Amelia remembered something.
"Where shall we put the parrot?" she asked.
***
[In a coffee house frequented by poets]
Brooms swished into brooms, sweeping up scraps of paper with immortal odes crossed out on them.
***
The place was damp....Even ghosts would catch their death of cold in it.
***
[Bonus! As I prepared to abandon the book, I flipped quickly through to see if things appeared to take a promising turn later on. No such luck...but I swear I caught the word "parrot" flipping (or flapping!) by at one point. I couldn't track this parrot down, but I was content to let the matter lie (or perch) there and close the book. (Note for those keeping score: A century or two's worth of time elapses over the course of this story, so this was presumably not the same parrot as the one mentioned earlier. Then again, they can live a very long time!)]
