I am going to be unhelpful, and I want to explain why before you decide I have wasted your time.

This book has a shape you discover by reading it, and every fact I could give you about the plot is a small theft from that discovery. So: it is short. It is narrated by someone whose way of seeing the world is unusual and entirely coherent from the inside. It is set somewhere I have not seen anywhere else. That is the whole notice.

What I can say

The voice is the achievement. It would have been easy to make this narrator a puzzle for the reader to solve and feel clever about. Instead the book takes him seriously — his attention, his record-keeping, his kindness — and the effect is that by the time you understand more than he does, you are not ahead of him. You are worried about him.

The rare book that is gentler than its premise deserves.— The Editor

It is also, quietly, about what a person owes to a place, and what a place gives back. I finished it on a Tuesday and spent the rest of the week noticing buildings.

One warning

Avoid the reviews. Avoid the back cover if you can manage it. Several otherwise responsible publications gave away the hinge of this book in their opening paragraph, and I have never quite forgiven them.