“This is the spirited story of a working-class Viennese cafe and its odd-duck denizens. Robert Simon, an orphan who endured a hardscrabble youth, is now 31 in the year 1966. He makes a living doing odd jobs in Vienna’s old Karmelitermarkt and rents a furnished room from a war widow whose snoring he finds ‘strangely touching.’ Simon does have some ambition, and when the decrepit old market cafe is put up for rent, he signs a lease and makes it his own... A gem of a novel, whimsical and bittersweet but never sentimental, with indelible characters and a powerful sense of place.”
Read the full starred review in Kirkus Reviews.
