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tasmanian_bibliophile's review
3.0
‘Stay with me as we ask: can we tune in to chaos and therefore influence chance?’
A friend told me about this book, and I was curious. I mean, snakes and risk belong in the same sentence in my universe, but where does the parrot fit in? So, I picked up a copy from the library and joined DBC Pierre (nom de plume of Australian Peter Finlay) in Jamaica. I’ve not read any of his work since ‘Vernon God Little’ and was not sure what to expect.
DBC Pierre was in Trinidad to make a short film about a parrot when he found a Little Snake on the doormat of the house he was staying in. He discovered that Little Snake is #27 in Trinidad and Tobago’s lottery game (Play Whe). Clearly a signal, clearly a guide to the ‘vibrant maths’ of the universe. Especially when he had a bet on that number and won. And that is the path DBC Pierre takes us down in the twenty-nine vignettes contained within this slender volume. The parrot is largely incidental.
Reading this book is like listening to a long conversation about building a theory of life around chance, chaos and coincidence. Sort of. It is amusing in parts and invites the reader (listener) to move beyond ‘binary logic’ by considering human and animal influences. It begins with a Little Snake and ends with possibility.
Along the way, I learned about the habits of smokers at betting shops, the challenges of the driveway at the house DBC Pierre was living at in Jamaica, and stories about life in Texas and Mexico.
Did I make sense of it all? No, not really, but I enjoyed the journey. And I am still wondering about how random ‘luck’ really is.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
A friend told me about this book, and I was curious. I mean, snakes and risk belong in the same sentence in my universe, but where does the parrot fit in? So, I picked up a copy from the library and joined DBC Pierre (nom de plume of Australian Peter Finlay) in Jamaica. I’ve not read any of his work since ‘Vernon God Little’ and was not sure what to expect.
DBC Pierre was in Trinidad to make a short film about a parrot when he found a Little Snake on the doormat of the house he was staying in. He discovered that Little Snake is #27 in Trinidad and Tobago’s lottery game (Play Whe). Clearly a signal, clearly a guide to the ‘vibrant maths’ of the universe. Especially when he had a bet on that number and won. And that is the path DBC Pierre takes us down in the twenty-nine vignettes contained within this slender volume. The parrot is largely incidental.
Reading this book is like listening to a long conversation about building a theory of life around chance, chaos and coincidence. Sort of. It is amusing in parts and invites the reader (listener) to move beyond ‘binary logic’ by considering human and animal influences. It begins with a Little Snake and ends with possibility.
Along the way, I learned about the habits of smokers at betting shops, the challenges of the driveway at the house DBC Pierre was living at in Jamaica, and stories about life in Texas and Mexico.
Did I make sense of it all? No, not really, but I enjoyed the journey. And I am still wondering about how random ‘luck’ really is.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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