September 2013 Indie Next List

“Alone and restless one evening, Daniel Mercier is dining at a Parisian Brasserie when Francois Mitterand, the President of France, is seated at the next table. Mitterand and his friends eat, talk of world affairs, and finally depart, but Mitterand has left his hat behind. The dazed Mercier promptly dons said hat and the next day at work he finds himself unaccountably voluble, as if under a spell. The result of his eloquence and his newly stiffened spine is a promotion which he feels he owes to his new and talismanic hat. When he inadvertently leaves that hat on a train, it falls into the hands of. To say more would be telling too much. But don't miss this charming French confection of a novel that is irresistibly whimsical, possessed of wit somewhere between that of Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader and Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog.”
— Betsy Burton, The King's English, Salt Lake City, UT