This is one very unusual book. Originally written in the 1940s, this book has gone out of print for more than 60 years. It took me a while to get used to the old English. The really good thing about this book is that I could never guess what would happen next. To me, this book isn’t a pageturner but it isn’t a bad thing. There are quite a number of characters introduced and each has an associated story. At one point, I wasn’t reading a novel but was seeing characters coming alive! I agreed with Raymond Chandler (an American-British novelist and screenwriter who had been actively promoting this book as his favorite). Reading this book once is not enough. Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper deserves to be read multiple times. I can’t possibly understand Mr. Bowling right from the beginning. Now that I have finished reading the book, I understand where he comes from. The loneliness. The lack of love. Not necessarily depressive (as he found the act of suicide lacked the humor). Just another guy in the world who has to go through hell in order to find the meaning of life. Or rather, the reason to live.
PS. This is not really a typic detective novel. This is simply a murder story.
